


eyesight to the blind

by meatballsintheimpala



Series: the road of life [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Depression, Drinking, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Relationship(s), Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 39,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4498548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meatballsintheimpala/pseuds/meatballsintheimpala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Naruto's departure, everything in Konoha changes, yet it somehow stays the same. Kakashi-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it's called intervention

Four months after Naruto's departure from Konoha with Jiraiya, Tsunade decided that Kakashi was suffering from depression.

Of course, she didn’t specialize in the inner workings of the human mind and psyche (she left that to specialists like the Yamanakas), but her career as the best medic in the Five Great Shinobi Nations and as a kunoichi had taught her a thing or two about the imprint of the shinobi life on those in direct contact with it. Depression, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress were only few of the mental diseases that threatened shinobi all over the five nations.

It was normal, it was understandable, and it was very _very_ inconvenient.

Kakashi Hatake was usually one of the shinobi that caused no trouble to her. Certainly, he was a sassy unpunctual pervert, but he was loyal, strong and precise. His ninja skills could not be doubted and he was a great squad leader, for the sole reason that he seemed to inspire respect in his team members, who followed his orders to a T. She supposed that ten years in ANBU could do that to a man. Kakashi had his own reputation to uphold, and it was not one to be taken lightly by allies or adversaries alike.

However, every shinobi had their breaking point, and it seemed this was Kakashi’s.

And, of course, the fool was buried head-deep in denial concerning the matter.

“With all due respect, Hokage-sama, I am _not_ depressed.”

Tsunade peered at him over her joined hands, while he stood in front of her desk, hands in his pockets and jaw clenched.

 “Then why do you insist on taking on mission after mission after mission, Kakashi? According to our data, in the past four months, you have undertaken four S-ranked, seven A-ranked and six B-ranked missions.”

Kakashi raised an eyebrow in confusion. He clearly didn’t see where the problem was.

Tsunade sighed, putting down the file. “Each and every one of those missions were solo. And while you are an excellent shinobi, Kakashi, I cannot afford to have you being reckless on the field.”

“I have not—”

“No, you listen to _me_ , Kakashi. Your last mission was to escort the ambassador from Ishi back to their village. It was an A-rank. And while he was pleased with your performance as an escort, it was heavily implied that your mind was not it in.”

Kakashi’s eyes narrowed.

“In fact, he casually mentioned that you deliberately let _him_ deal with three of the missing-nins that attacked you, while they were _six_ in total.”

She could see a vein pop on his forehead.

“Hokage-sama, let me explain. The ambassador was a high-level ninja like myself, while the ambushers were mere _chuunin._ He could hold his own just fi—”

Tsunade’s fist slammed forcefully against her desk, effectively making a sizeable dent. “I don’t care if he could fend off with no escort at all, Kakashi! He was _paying_ us so he wouldn’t have to. And you went and disobeyed my orders while escorting a high-ranking official. And, believe me, I would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if I hadn’t gotten three more reports referring to similar behavior on three of your previous missions. Damn it, what kind of image do you think we present to the other nations when our jounin behave like that?”

“I—” he tried a third time, only to be interrupted again.

“Can it, Hatake. I don’t care if you are one of my best shinobi. I will not tolerate such insolent behavior. I understand that the disbandment of your team has been hard on you, but this is not a laughing matter. I need you at your full potential. So you either get your shit together and learn how to operate within a team or there will be no more missions for you for a long time. Understood?”

For all intents and purposes, Kakashi _didn’t_. “Hokage-sama—”

Tsunade waved a warning finger at him. “Do _not_ make me assign you a psychiatrist, Kakashi. You know I can.”

Kakashi closed his mouth and nodded in defeat. There was nothing more to be done and he knew it. She would not change her mind on the subject.

“Good call. You are dismissed until further notice.”

With a sharp bow, Kakashi turned on his heel and walked out of the Hokage’s office.

Tsunade brought her hands to her face and massaged her temples. Damn those shinobi who thought they knew better than anybody. Damn this village and the thousands of responsibilities it came with. Damn that pervert Jiraiya for passing her this job and then skipping away. Basically, _damn everything._

This was too much to be dealing with sober.


	2. simon said

Kakashi kicked a pebble furiously, channeling all his anger through the action. For all her insight, the Godaime didn't know what the hell she was talking about.

Depressed. Hatake Kakashi  _depressed._  She was out of her goddamn mind.

He had found his father dead in their living room on the age of five. He had fought in the Third Shinobi War before he knew what was down his pants. He had served in ANBU for  _ten_  years. He had faced one of his teammates' death and caused the death of the other. He had witnessed the Kyuubi attack Konoha and lived through his sensei's sacrifice for the village.

And he thought that the disbandment of Team Seven could  _break_  him?

He didn't even  _care_  for the little brats.

Okay, he did.  _He did_. But Kakashi had a practical mind. And he had to admit that while he had been their assigned sensei, he had barely taught the kids anything in their time together.

Chakra control? Sakura had it down since day one. Shadow clones? Naruto had mastered them before he became a genin. The Sharingan? Sasuke had fared well enough by himself during the fight with Haku without Kakashi's instructions.

They didn't  _need_  him; they were perfectly capable of making their own ways in the world without him.

And they had.

Kakashi paused in the middle of the street and pinched the bridge of his nose.

It was okay —  _it was okay_. He could do without missions for a while. He could. The Godaime  _had_  to be right. Seventeen solo missions in four months were a lot. A very sizeable lot. In fact there had been times when he would complete one mission and immediately assign himself on another. They had worn him down, they had to have. He could use some time off. There were other things that demanded his attention, anyway.

He could finally arrange a training schedule he actually would keep. He could take care of his ninken, take them out for some scouting drill to keep them in shape. He could re-read his books before the next one came out, put some actual food in his stomach other than the crap he usually ate on missions. He could even go out with the other jounin every once in a while; hell, if they hadn't bothered him enough about it.

Kakashi took a deep breath. It was no big deal. He could take some time off from active duty. He wasn't obsessed with his job. And he definitely wasn't  _depressed_. He would prove that to the Godaime, and then as compensation, she would have to send him out on the most demanding missions she had available. And then no one would dare question his focus.

It would be just  _fine_. Everything would work out on his favor, in the end.

With a small, triumphant smile, Kakashi began walking towards his apartment. This was going to be a walk in the park for him. Depressed his ass. Depressed people don't map out their lives so carefully and so precisely. Depressed people don't have so much energy. Depressed people are not so excited about the prospect of carrying out plans.

He could do this and come out victorious.

...right?


	3. terra incognita

On day one, Kakashi shot out of bed at four-twenty-three in the morning.

He looked worriedly around him, curious to find that the world was still dark outside the window. Why was he awake? As far as he could recall, he hadn’t had a nightmare. In fact, it had been one of the few nights he remembered having such a restful sleep. With a sigh, he fell back against the mattress.

It was alright. Just a little malfunctioning of his internal clock, no big deal. He was used to waking up before the crack of dawn for missions and training, after all. Force of habit, that’s what this was.

Making himself comfortable against the pillows, Kakashi closed his eyes and willed himself back to sleep.

_Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick—_

His eyes shot open and he glanced at the clock. _4:24._

With a groan, he buried his face in his hands. This wouldn’t work. He couldn’t keep his eyes closed. It was as if his mind wanted to be awake. His body, on the other hand, demanded rest. Which was completely understandable, given the amount of pressure he had been putting it under in the last four months. But his mind wouldn’t cooperate.

Kakashi rolled over and tried to sleep on his stomach, to no avail. After a few more tries, he gave up and got out of bed. Locating his training gear on a chair, he slowly dressed himself, deciding to forego his vest and hitai-ate. It had been a while since he practiced his taijutsu and bukijutsu. Careful not to step on any of the sleeping ninja dogs that were scattered across his apartment, he trod towards the door.

Securing his pouch on his hip, he left for the training fields.

* * *

 

Five hours later, Kakashi stumbled back to his apartment, covered in dirt and overall exhausted.

The dogs were up and about, some of them lounging in the yard, while the rest of them watched him closely as he shed his clothes and dragged himself under the showerhead. Bracing one forearm against the tiles, Kakashi leaned his forehead against his arm.

This didn’t make any sense whatsoever. He hadn’t trained for too long. Actually, this was relatively normal compared to his usual training sessions in the past. But his body would not cooperate as he wanted it to. In five hours, he barely got two hours of proper training done. He just kept drifting, forgetting how to synch his limbs, pausing mid-pose because his muscles wouldn’t move further.

Exhaling a long breath, Kakashi turned off the water. He was fine. Just a little out of shape. He hadn’t trained properly in a long time and it was only normal that he wouldn’t get it done perfectly on the first try. After all, his training rituals were pretty demanding, even for him. He would get it right next time.

He got dressed in his sleeveless shirt and sweatpants that he usually wore around the house and went out to feed his dogs. Their tails wagged happily as they settled around their assigned bowls and began to eat. With a shake of his head at their antics (it didn’t matter if they were trained for combat, they were still pups in a sense), Kakashi picked up his book and went to read in silence by the window.

Four hours and only thirty pages later, he put it down and ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. He had to train. His inability to perform according to his training regime gnawed at him. He would just have to try _harder_.

So, he decided to put six hours of training in the morning and six hours in the afternoon on his daily schedule. He woke up way before the crack of dawn and trained until noon, came home for a few hours to shower and rest, and then went out again until sundown. His sleeping schedule didn’t improve, and he barely caught four hours of sleep each night, but it didn’t matter. He was _vivid_. He felt energized and vigorous. He could do anything he wanted.

On the evening of day four, he collapsed on his bed for a thirty-minute power nap and woke up approximately twenty hours later.


	4. kicks after six

Kakashi’s eyes blinked open about twelve times before he finally regained his vision. Gods, his head felt so heavy. He hadn’t felt like that since the last time Genma and Raidou had talked him into a drinking competition. A swift glance at the clock and out of the window told him all he needed to know.

He couldn’t decide if the headache was due to the copious amount of sleep he had gotten that night or due to the absolute lack of it the previous days, but he felt shitty all the same.

Well, he could cross intense training out of his list. He wasn’t capable of pulling it off at the moment, if his complete collapse hadn’t proved otherwise.

Feeling someone stare at him, he shifted his head to the right to find Shiba scrutinizing him with his gaze. He could hear the rest of the dogs in the living room, so he raised an eyebrow at the dog with the little mohawk.

“Something wrong?”

Shiba just kept looking. Kakashi could feel the beginnings of sweat forming on the back of his neck. _What?_

“You alright, boss?”

The question threw him off more than his realization of how much he had slept. Alright? Of course he was alright. He just happened to have somehow screwed up his sleeping schedule. No big deal. It wasn’t like he ever slept like a normal person, during normal hours. He was just tired and needed to replenish his strength. What was so wrong about that?

“I’m fine, Shiba,” he bit out more sharply than he intended, but the dog just kept staring.

After a moment, he turned to exit the room. “We’re hungry.”

Kakashi sighed deeply. That was all he seemed to be doing these days. With more effort than he thought he would have to put in the action, he pushed himself off the bed and trod towards the kitchen. As he poured the ninken’s food in their respective bowls, he was suddenly struck with the realization that he hadn’t eaten in four days himself.

 _That_ was odd. He hadn’t once felt his stomach complain during those days. In fact, he was so not-hungry that the thought of eating had altogether skipped his mind.

Although, now that he thought of it, it _did_ explain his sudden collapse the previous day. He wasn’t sick or tired, he was simply running low on sustenance. He knew that in order to perform as a shinobi, your diet had to be as balanced as your training schedule, so it only made sense that this was the reasoning behind his difficulty to perform accordingly.

He briefly wondered how Naruto was able to perform as he did, given that he only ate ramen, at all times of day, every day of the week. Come to think of it, Sakura used to starve herself in order to maintain her so-called figure and Sasuke had an unhealthy obsession with tomatoes. Not that it was all he ate, but they came up an awfully great amount of times in his lunch, dinner _and_ breakfast.

Shaking his head, Kakashi decided that his team had been weird in more ways than one. It was probably better that they hadn’t made it. He could only imagine all three of them collapsing after three days of training just because their bodies malfunctioned due to lack of proper nutrition.

Opening the fridge, he wasn’t really surprised to find it empty, save for a carton of milk that was way past its expiration date and a bowl of leftover ramen that emitted a foul smell.

Although he still didn’t feel like eating, he figured it would be best if he did. The sooner his body would get the nutrients it required, the sooner he would be back to full health and be able to continue his training regime.

He went out and bought enough groceries to last a month without leaving the apartment, which he only realized when he began to unpack them. He certainly didn’t need all those apples, and twelve cartons of instant ramen were a bit too much for someone who lived alone and often forgot to eat. Kakashi shrugged. He could always pass some to Gai. With the way that man went through physical exercise, he ought to be eating for ten.

After meticulously preparing a vegetable stew, of which he ended up eating less than half, he washed the dishes and picked up his book, settling comfortably on the couch. The ninken were all lounging around the apartment, seeing that the weather was acting up outside. Bisuke even took a seat next to him, curling into a ball next to his boss.

Kakashi smiled and reached down to scratch behind the dog’s ears. Bisuke let out a small sound of appreciation and leaned into his touch.

No matter how many years passed, his dogs would still act like puppies in need of coddling. Most of them were mean fighters that wouldn’t hesitate to snap a man in half during a battle, but inside the confines of their home, all they did was yawn and beg for treats.

Kakashi cast a glance at the rest of them, and they all seemed as lethargic as Bisuke. He wondered why. They hadn’t been on a mission lately, nor had he taken them out for any training drills as he usually did when he wasn’t on a mission. And unlike himself, he remembered to feed them frequently.

Or did he?

His hand pausing on where it was petting Bisuke, Kakashi racked his head for answers. Shiba had been hovering over him when he woke up earlier, and he had informed him that the dogs were hungry. He seldom had to be reminded to feed them. But then again, he seldom slept twenty hours straight, too.

When was the last time he had bathed any of them? When was the last time he had taken them to the training grounds, not only for training but just to get them out of the house? Sure, his apartment had a small yard in the back, but there were _eight_ of them. Which reminded him that he hadn’t cleaned the yard in a while, and that was probably why they seemed so uneasy.

Kakashi gritted his teeth and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was okay. He had a lot on his mind the last few weeks. With the missions on one hand and then the forced vacation by Tsunade, it was only normal that he had been a bit disoriented. He was human, after all, not a machine that operated flawlessly.

He was allowed to make mistakes. He was allowed to _forget_.

He didn’t realize he had shut his eyes, until he felt a paw tugging at his pant leg. Kakashi opened his eyes to see all his ninken staring at him intently, their own eyes filled with worry about their boss. He gave them a smile behind his mask and stood up.

“Alright, boys. Line up, it’s bath time,” he said, making a bee-line for the bathroom and hearing eight sets of paws following behind him.

Everything would be just fine.


	5. no place left to run

On day six, Kakashi decided that he was going to get shitfaced drunk and forget about the world.

He left his apartment after sundown and joined the guys at some dingy civilian bar. It was an unspoken agreement between the shinobi of Konoha that whenever they were not on a mission or when they hadn’t just come back from one, they would hit the civilian bars. Shinobi bars were for after-mission benders, breakdowns and trysts. Civilian bars were for relaxing, celebrating and, essentially, forgetting.

Kakashi couldn’t care less about the decorum of the bar he would drink his liver to oblivion in. But a civilian bar meant less shinobi casting side-glances at him and murmuring among themselves about the state of the Copy Ninja.

He was fairly certain that everyone knew and gossiped about his mini-suspension by now.

When he arrived, he found Genma, Raidou and Asuma occupying a table at one end of the bar, which had a full view of the place without being on the spotlight. Mentally, Kakashi thanked whatever entity he could that Gai wasn’t there, but on a mission with his genin team, as he later found out. He didn’t think he could handle Gai coaxing him into a drinking competition tonight.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Genma greeted with a low whistle, kicking a chair out for Kakashi. “Didn’t think I’d see you anytime soon, man. What with all those missions you were taking and all.”

Kakashi felt his hand form a fist, but he kept it concealed under the table. “Well, someone has to do it. I don’t see you tripping over your feet to take on any S-ranks.”

Genma rolled his senbon around his lips and laughed. “Yeah, probably cause I have no desire to be sent back in a matchbox.”

“Enough with that,” Raidou interrupted their banter, pushing a cup of sake towards each of them. “We’re not here to talk about work. If I wanted to do that, I’d have gone to _The Dancing Leaf._ We’re here to have a good time like normal people. Alright?”

The two bickering men shrugged and Asuma raised his cup as a toast. “To another day alive.”

The rest of them raised their own cups in agreement and quickly down their contents. It was a tradition of sorts amongst them. It was a fact that in their line of work, you could never take anything for granted. A simple C-rank mission could easily cost you your life if something went wrong. His own mission in the Land of Waves with Team Seven a long time ago had proven as much. So, they always toasted to the day they had added to their lives, as a reminder of their own mortality.

Time seemed to move in its own accord inside the bar. More bottles came and went and soon they were all pleasantly buzzed. Conversation was easy and the guys were clearly in a good mood. The bar was crowded, but not suffocatingly so. People came and went, laughing and chatting, some of them even began to sway to the slow music that played in the background. It was a good night.

Kakashi, however, didn’t turn out to be much of a company. For some reason, every topic of conversation managed to irk him and his comrades’ opinions only made him angrier. He didn’t know why he was feeling so agitated, but he was. Luckily, the others seemed to pick up on his sour mood quickly and quietly deserted the table one by one. He saw Genma chatting up a pretty blonde by the bar, Raidou talking animatedly with Shizune, and Asuma trying too hard not to indulge in anything that would indicate his relationship with Kurenai.

With an uninterested shrug, Kakashi returned to his sake.

He hadn’t cared much for company in the first place. His goal was to get so drunk that he would finally forget about all the shit he’d had to deal with lately.

But as he downed bottle after bottle, the only thing he managed to do was remember.

The first bottle brought back the memories of his family. His mother, with the soft hands and the warm smile, who sang him to sleep every night, before a mysterious illness had taken her away. His only memories of her were a vague smell, a soft touch, an echoing voice. Then, his father, Hatake Sakumo, Konoha’s White Fang, who had taken his own life in disgrace. A deep voice and a strong embrace, a warm presence that took away Kakashi’s bad dreams as a child.

With the second bottle of sake came Team Minato. Obito Uchiha, his best friend and comrade, the boy who died to protect his friends, the man who saw the future through the eye he gifted Kakashi with. Rin Nohara, the kind girl who pined after him, tended to his wounds and died by his hand. And finally, Minato Namikaze, Minato-sensei, the man who had been a second father to him, who had stood by his side through everything, and who had ultimately lost his life fighting to protect the village he loved and the family he adored, leaving behind an orphaned child to face the horrors of the world alone.

The third bottle made him reminisce his time in ANBU. All the comrades he had lost, the people he had killed, the mistakes he had made, the darkness he had seen. Ten years of living under a rock, forfeiting all personal relationships and thinking that it was all for the good of the village, while Danzou’s ROOT spread like cancer through the ranks.

It all came swirling in a whirlwind of emotion and alcohol. By the time his mind had come around to consider his latest failure, Team Seven, he was too drunk to see straight.

Failure after failure after failure. That was his life. His father was dead. Team Minato was gone. ANBU had coughed him up, forced him into early retirement. Team Seven was disbanded. Sasuke was halfway across the world under Orochimaru's watchful eye. Naruto was training far away with Jiraiya. Sakura had become Tsunade's apprentice.

And he was there. Stuck in his place, doomed to witness his life pass before his eyes, while he could do nothing about it.

Kakashi’s uncovered eye slid across the interior of the bar, looking but not really settling on anything, his mind too hazy to even register his surroundings.

Until he saw the boy. He was probably around thirteen, rather short and slim, not yet having hit his growth spurt. His hair was dark and spiky and he leaned against the entrance of the bar, his gaze boring into Kakashi, and through his blurry vision, the older man realized that he was staring at two identical red eyes.

Kakashi’s breath hitched in his throat and he stood up clumsily, knocking over a bottle in the process.

As soon as his body had found its balance, the boy was gone. Kakashi made a frantic exit from the bar, stepping out into the chilly night air just in time to see a small figure making a left turn down the street. Without thinking, he bolted after it, trying to focus his chakra on the soles of his feet in order to manage to run in a straight line.

Sweat pooled on his back, soaking through his shirt as he raced through the streets of Konoha with the moon lighting his way. The boy didn’t show signs of stopping and for all his inebriation, neither did Kakashi. It didn’t matter that he could barely see anything both because of the darkness and the alcohol. It didn’t matter that his breath began to clog in his throat or that his legs felt wobbly. It didn’t matter that his brain wasn’t processing his surroundings.

All that mattered was Sasuke.

Sasuke, his student who ran away. Sasuke, the one who _left_ them, who abandoned his friends, who tore a hole through Naruto’s chest and drove a knife to Sakura’s heart. Sasuke, whom Kakashi had trained with for a month in preparation for the Chuunin exams. Sasuke, who was the last Uchiha Konoha had left, who was Obito’s only legacy. Sasuke, who was Kakashi’s greatest failure, another Uchiha he had failed to protect.

Sasuke, who was like a son to him.

Kakashi ran after the boy ceaselessly, picking himself up when his feet didn’t cooperate and pushing himself not to lose him again. They could have been running around Konoha for hours, for all Kakashi knew. The only thing in his hazy mind was Sasuke. He could not lose Sasuke.

The boy led him to the training grounds. He stopped before the wooden post in the middle, his back facing his teacher. Kakashi’s pace faltered as he stumbled on the grass, trembling all over and fighting to catch his breath. A dark cloud had shadowed the moon and he could only make the Uchiha crest on the back of the boy’s shirt.

“Sasuke,” Kakashi called out, his breath shaky and hoarse. The boy’s head turned, the blood red Sharingan of his left eye tearing a hole through Kakashi.

Absent-mindedly, he noted that this was where he had met them for the first time.

Kakashi took a step forward. Sasuke’s body flickered.

 _No,_ he thought, panic rising in his chest as his feet pushed him forward, breaking on a sprint in hopes that he could close the distance fast enough.

With his arm outstretched, Kakashi reached for the boy, his fingers reaching for the fabric of his shirt, and the last thing he saw was the taut line of his student’s mouth and the dark mark under his collar before his body vanished into thin air.

Kakashi fell to his knees before the three wooden posts.

Too late. _He was too late._

Closing his eyes and opening his heart, Hatake Kakashi wept.


	6. walking on the edge

The next day, Kakashi woke up with a hangover that felt like it could last for months and a complete memory loss of the night before.

He was leaning against one of the wooden posts in the third training ground covered in a layer of morning dew as the sun began to rise behind the Hokage Monument.

In spite of his obvious hangover of epic proportions, he managed to stagger to his feet, his instincts a little out of shape, but still going strong. Leaning against the wooden post for support until his head stropped spinning, Kakashi took in his surroundings.

It was a wonder nobody had showed up for training yet. Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, it was around the time the jounin teachers usually met up with their teams to begin their training. Kakashi himself used to make Team Seven show up at this hour, even if he made an appearance at least an hour later.

He was thankful for the solitude of the place, however.

Kakashi was a respectable shinobi. Sure, he shit on propriety any time the opportunity presented itself, but he was no fool. His reputation across the shinobi world was notorious and his enemies often shivered at the sight of the Copy Ninja. He would be damned if he let a bunch of genin defile it by finding him sleeping on the training grounds after a night of debauchery he had absolutely no memory of.

He only hoped no one had come in the interval between his passing out and the moment he woke up as well.

With tremendous effort, Kakashi forced his legs to move, taking slowly the road to his apartment. Neither his mind nor his body was in a state to manipulate chakra into teleporting to his desired destination.

Konoha was waking up, preparing for a new day. Lights turned on in the houses, shop owners went about opening their businesses, and children began to flood the streets, some of them racing towards the Academy while others headed towards the civilian school. And yet all Kakashi wanted to do was lock himself up in his place and never come back out again.

When he reached his apartment, he shot straight for the bathroom, tearing his clothes off as quickly as his foggy brain allowed him to and stepping under the hot spray of water.

He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against the tile wall and allowing the water to wash off any remnants of the previous night.

He was being reckless. He didn’t do things like that. Drink himself to the point of oblivion and wake up somewhere with complete lack of how he got there in the first place? He was Kakashi fucking Hatake and he was acting like a goddamn _child_.

Kakashi exhaled a long breath. It was okay. He had crossed a line he didn’t usually flirt with, but it wasn’t the end of the world. The last few months had been rough on him, he was allowed to feel a little wind up. And alcohol used to relax him pretty damn well. If he went a little overboard with it… Well, things like that were bound to happen once in a while. Loneliness caught up to you whether you wanted it to or not, and getting drunk was always a safe bet when it came to drowning your problems.

What really piqued his curiosity, though, was how and why he had ended up on the training grounds. What could have possibly drawn him there? It was certainly a miracle that he wasn’t sporting any bruises by running into a building or anything on his trip there. He thanked his ninja skills for that. Even if his mind wasn’t in the right place, his instincts were pretty hard to kill.

The other thing that made him less curious and more frustrated was his lack of memory from last night. What had hit him so hard that he had felt that he had to drink so much? He hadn’t been having any of his usual nightmares as of late, and despite the forced vacation and his inevitable stir-craziness, he was feeling okay. What was that feeling weighting down on his stomach?

With a sigh, Kakashi turned off the water and dried himself off. After putting on a fresh pair of clothes and feeding the dogs, he decided that a few hours of sleep on a regular bed were much needed after the night he had.

Maybe it would clear his head enough so that he could actually remember what transpired the night before.

* * *

 

_Sasuke! Sasuke, no!_

_It’s too late, too late_ —

Kakashi jumped up, his chest heaving with harsh breaths. His eyes scanned the room rapidly, not seeing anything out of the ordinary in his minimalistic bedroom. A bookcase, a desk with dozens of scrolls strewn over its surface, a half-open closet, a nightstand with two almost identical pictures on it.

Falling back on the bed, he covered his face with his hands. What the hell was that? Why did he see Sasuke all of a sudden? And why was he chasing after him inside the village? And what was that feeling of being too late? Too late for what?

This was not good. He had never dreamed of Sasuke before. Sure, he had beat himself up over not being able to reach the two boys in time to stop their fight, but he had never thought that he could save Sasuke anyway. The boy was too far gone, too caught up in revenge, too consumed by the idea of power. Kakashi knew that there was no changing his mind.

Then why the hell was he dreaming about reaching out to the boy and having him slip through his fingertips?

Kakashi groaned loudly and threw the covers off of himself. He wouldn’t ponder on this a moment longer—he didn’t _want_ to. There was no changing the past. Sasuke was gone, Naruto was gone, Sakura was gone. No use crying over spilled milk.

Yet, he was angry. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know whom he was angry at, but he felt as if his insides were boiling. And there was only one thing Kakashi would do when that happened.

He drank.

And even though it was a terrible idea to hit the bottles when he was still recovering from his last hangover, Kakashi didn’t care. He wanted this fire inside him extinguished and he wanted it extinguished _now_.

He dug through the kitchen cupboards in a frenzy, oblivious to the worried looks of the ninken, and smiled in triumph when he found his hidden stash of sake. Life was good. Even though he was so mad he could barely contain it and his body ached as if he had carried a ton across the Wind Desert, as long as there was sake, life was good.

He pulled his mask down and raised the bottle to his mouth, but before the liquid reached his lips, he heard the shrill sound of the doorbell.

Kakashi almost growled, tugging his mask back on. Who could possibly be visiting him? He was a very private person, he didn’t normally get visitors. Even his few friends knew not to bother him in his home unless it was an emergency. He wholeheartedly hoped there wasn’t one as he walked to the door and swung it open.

“My eternal rival! It has been long since the last of our contests! Let us indulge in another!”

Of _course_ it was Gai. He didn’t know why he hadn’t figured it out earlier. Only Gai was oblivious enough to seek him out in his own house in order to have a _contest_.

Kakashi looked thoughtfully at the sake bottle in his hand. “I was busy,” he murmured mindlessly, entertaining the idea of poofing away to some quiet place where he could get drunk in peace, away from noisy comrades.

“You are hip as ever, Kakashi! Always keeping busy, like a true wielder of the power of youth! Let’s have another match and exploit all the energy that is brimming from you!”

Kakashi looked at him with his tired black eye. Did he seriously believe that he was… _brimming_ with energy? He was a walking _corpse._

Gai seemed unfazed, however, as he went on. “And since I laid down the challenge for our previous contest, it is only fair that I let you, my eternal rival, decide upon our competition this time!”

“Gai,” Kakashi deadpanned. “I don’t want to.”

“That is fair, my youthful friend! I shall draw a suitable challenge from my own repertoire—”

“ _Gai_ ,” he hissed. “I don’t want to participate in _any_ challenge right now.”

Gai stared at him for a very long time, studying his covered face as if it held all the secrets and wonders of the world. Kakashi’s fingers began to twitch where they were clenched around the neck of the bottle. Every fiber of his body told him to shut the door to his rivals face, lock himself in the bathroom and drink his weight in alcohol. However, he somehow managed to not even flinch under Gai’s intense gaze. If he had been any vainer, Kakashi would have congratulated himself on his poker face.

Suddenly, the spandex clad man broke out of his trance, slumping his shoulders in a pose that Kakashi had come to identify as defeated.

“Alas, you win once again, Kakashi!”

The silver-haired jounin couldn’t have been more confused. “What?”

“You have proved yourself superior in the unspoken challenge of patience and restraint!”

Kakashi covered his face with his free hand, groaning in despair. “ _Oh my God_ …”

“You have won fair and square, Kakashi, no need to be humble! I shall take this opportunity and learn from you by expanding my own patience!”

“Gai,” Kakashi cut through his rambling for what it felt like the fiftieth time that evening. “Do you want to spar?”

In all honesty, he didn’t know what made him even consider such thing. Usually, Kakashi would avoid Gai and his so called challenges like the plague, and when they couldn’t be avoided, he would suggest they compete on something easy and generally effortless. However, he was in a bad mood, what with the forced vacation and the demons that couldn’t stop dancing in his mind even for one minute. He needed an outlet. And Gai’s passion and skillset guaranteed a training session that would leave him bone-tired, so much that he would barely have enough energy to shower before collapsing on his bed for a possibly restful sleep.

Gai stared again. “Spar?”

“Yeah. No challenge, no contest, no score to even. Just a friendly spar.”

“But—”

“I haven’t trained with anyone other than myself since…” Kakashi swallowed hard when he realized what he was going to say. _Since I trained Sasuke for the Chuunin exams_. Why was he still thinking about Sasuke?

Clearing his throat, he amended, “in quite some time. So, are you up for it?”

The peculiar phraseology of that question seemed to pull Gai out of his daze. He struck his usual pose, giving Kakashi a blinding grin and a thumbs up.

“Of course, my eternal rival! It would be my utmost honor to assist you in your training! I shall wait for you at the training grounds! Do not feel the need to make haste, for I will be working on my patience!”

In a blur of green and black, he was gone, leaving Kakashi on his doorway with the bottle hanging limply from his fingers. He sighed and shut the door. Storing the bottle in a cupboard for future use, he went to put on his training gear.

He must have been mentally disturbed for instigating a sparring match with Gai of all people after a night of copious amounts of alcohol and a week of restless sleep, but it somehow seemed like the only thing that would manage to numb his brain enough to the things that were happening in his life and the odd consequences they seemed to come with.

Tugging his hitai-ate over his left eye, Kakashi wondered, not for the first time, if he was truly going insane.


	7. the struggle within

He was.

He _was_ going insane. There was no doubt about it. Konoha’s Copy Ninja, Kakashi of the Sharingan, the son of the White Fang and student to the Fourth Hokage was a hair’s breadth away from completely losing his mind.

The walls were closing in on him. Alcohol didn't seem to work the way he wanted it to. His books seemed — Gods forbid — _boring_. He had even initiated a training session with _Gai_ in order to relieve some of the tension, and it had all been in vain.

He had to get out. He didn't care if the Hokage thought he was depressed and shouldn't go on missions for a while. He would go out of his freaking mind if he had to stay idle for one more minute.

Kakashi had heard about the withdrawal syndrome, but he never thought he would go through it himself. He wasn’t an addict, by any chance. He drank as much and as frequently as your average shinobi, he didn’t smoke, and he had only indulged in illegal substances in his early twenties, during his time in ANBU, and to be frank, it hadn’t been an experience he held dear, thus he hadn’t sought it out since.

It never occurred to him that he would one day be having symptoms of withdrawal from _work_.

But he was. No matter how hard he tried to keep his mind and body occupied, his hands kept twitching for some invisible drag of chakra and his mind kept meandering through the places of the world he could be roaming and the missions he could be leading.

Kakashi was a workaholic and he was pretty okay with that. There wasn’t much else to occupy himself with, anyway. He was a very private person with no family, a few friends and even fewer sexual relationships over the years. He had a closet full of skeletons — courtesy of his tumultuous past — and he understood that entering a relationship meant eventually unloading all that baggage onto someone else’s shoulders, which he profoundly refused to do.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone. Kakashi had been a ninja since the tender age of five, having graduated from the Academy and earned his hitai-ate after merely a year of attendance. He had been inside the belly of the beast for almost twenty five years now. In addition to being a generally private person, he had no living relatives and a streak of dead comrades following him wherever he went. Add the failed and recently disbanded Team Seven to that lot, and one could easily understand why he rarely sought out the company of others.

The shinobi life was basically all he had ever known.

However, his personality was closely linked to his job, and being torn away from the latter was having a serious impact on the former.

_He was going insane._

Kakashi sighed as he walked around Konoha. He had never felt so overwhelmed by the village before. He loved Konoha. It was his home, his sanctuary. Despite all the wrongs in his life, all the pain he had caused and the mistakes he had made, Konoha had always been there to welcome him back. It wasn’t fair for him to be acting like a caged animal.

Maybe it was his fault that he was going stir crazy. He had devoted his entire life into being a shinobi, taking little care to cultivate relationships or even hobbies, other than reading. It was only logical that being pulled off from work was making him feel like a bum.

Lost in his musings, he didn’t realize that his feet had taken him to the training grounds behind the playground in the east side of the village. It was the spot where Kurenai’s team usually trained, and today was no exception.

He kept his distance from them, studying the sparring genin with newfound interest. Kiba and Shino were advancing towards Hinata, while she tried to fend off their attacks. Kurenai was watching them with a careful eye, obviously trying to pick up any flaws in either of their techniques.

Kakashi’s eyes were first drawn to Hinata. She didn't seem half as terrified as he remembered her being on the Chuunin exams against her cousin. She was confident, he could tell from her posture. Her feet were firmly planted on the ground and her palms were open, sizzling with chakra. Kiba was on all fours, and if Kakashi didn’t know better, he would say that it was actually Akamaru. But it seemed that Kurenai had him working on his beast transformation. Shino, on the other hand, seemed as cool and collected as ever, coming at his teammate with multiple insect clones.

Kurenai kept barking orders at them, either concerning their stance or their attack or defense plan. Kakashi felt almost nostalgic. It had been a while since he had instructed his own students in any way. And, to be frank, they had never even remotely managed to perform a training session that involved all three of them working together to develop their individual skills at the same time. It was usually Naruto coming onto Sasuke while he sighed and Sakura watched intently. On the few times he had actually managed them to cooperate, they had grumbled for hours.

Kakashi didn’t think he would miss all that whining.

Somewhere during his silent contemplation, Kurenai spotted him and came to stand beside him. “Hey. I haven’t seen you in a while,” she greeted.

“I’ve been busy with missions lately,” he told her, both their eyes never leaving the three teenagers sparring before them. “They have improved.”

Kurenai nodded with a smile towards her students. “They want to enter the Chuunin exams in Suna this year. Even Shino is excited, even if he doesn’t show it.”

“I hear Asuma’s team is entering as well,” Kakashi said.

“They are. Ino is trying to coax Sakura into joining them as their third member. With Shikamaru already being a chuunin and all, she and Chouji can’t enter on their own.”

Kakashi nodded, trying not to raise suspicion. Of course he didn’t know about that. How could he have? The last he had heard of Sakura was that she was undergoing a serious training regime imposed by the Hokage herself. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, after all. Sakura was an ambitious girl. She had already become an apprentice to Tsunade, and a very successful one, if the rumors he heard were correct. Surely, the Chuunin exams were going to be a walk in the park for her.

But there was still that odd pang of guilt in his chest. During his time as the leader of Team Seven, he had barely given Sakura the time of day. He had dismissed her as a mere fangirl, mostly ignoring her near perfect chakra control and all the doors it opened for her in favor of tending to the boys. He really had no right to feel offended that she hadn’t sought him out to tell him that she was considering entering the Chuunin exams.

Sakura was very smart. Even though she wasn’t part of a clan and didn’t possess a kekkei genkai, she had still found a way to put her brains into good use. Medical ninjutsu was extremely intricate and required immense chakra control. It also required lots of studying, something that Sakura gobbled down with passion. He had faith in her decisions, even if he had no part in making them.

Maybe it was for the best. After all, he _had_ driven their team to the ground with his lack of teaching skills. He didn’t have to destroy his students’ future as individuals as well.

"Any feedback?" Kurenai asked, breaking him out of his looming thoughts and motioning to her team. She was still green to this and her confidence often wavered where it concerned teaching her genin. But Kurenai was adamant about helping those kids become great shinobi and her fervor wasn’t something she could easily hide.

“They’ll be fine,” Kakashi said with a shrug and began walking away.

As if he could ever give any useful feedback when it came to team building. He had already ruined his own team. There was no need to destroy another.

He made a stop at Ichiraku on his way home. His appetite was still absent, but he had decided that collapsing due to malnourishment wasn’t in his immediate plans. The old man smiled politely when he saw him take up the seat he usually occupied during his frequent stops there with Team Seven and retreated to the kitchen to prepare Kakashi’s order.

It was amazing how a few short months of coming there with the kids had changed his perspective on this place. Kakashi wasn’t a picky eater by any chance, but he didn’t put much effort in what he ate either. Digging out unknown gourmet places wasn’t his forte. And while Ichiraku was in no place gourmet, it still was a must-go-to place for those who visited the village.

Kakashi remembered when the little ramen stand had first opened its doors to the hungry people of Konoha. He hadn’t cared much for ramen back then, but his sensei and Kushina loved the place and it was one of the few places that could sate Obito’s hunger without him having to go broke in the process. Thus, Team Minato could be frequently seen having lunch there.

It was only normal that Kakashi had stopped visiting the place after every person it reminded him of was long dead.

Admittedly, he hadn’t been really surprised when Naruto had first suggested they had their first lunch as a team in Ichiraku. Given his heritage, it would be more than strange if the blond didn’t like ramen. He was more surprised when the rest of the team had readily agreed to it, and even shocked when he found himself starting to like the place all over again.

Eating together was probably the only activity his team could get through together without bickering. Oddly enough, those hours spent perched up on Ichiraku’s stools were also the times when the kids would always be civil with each other and act like friends.

Kakashi suspected that it had to do with Naruto’s views on food. For Naruto, eating was a ceremonial practice. He worshipped ramen like a god and he never let a noodle go to waste. Sakura ate like a bird, barely ever finishing half her bowl before passing the leftovers to Naruto. Sasuke, on the other hand, ate like a noble, with small bites and soundless slurps, befitting of the discipline of the Uchiha clan.

Kakashi smiled as he thought of all the times they had heavily taken their seats in the shop after a mission, hoping for a warm bowl of ramen (or four, in Naruto’s case) to fill their empty stomachs. All the food fights he had stopped, all the money he had invested in feeding his students, all the nagging he had had to put up with until they finally dragged him to the ramen stand in the end of the day.

With a weary sigh, he gazed into the bowl of miso ramen that had been placed in front of him. It was pretty lonely out there without them. Without their bickering and their whining and all the noise they produced on a daily basis.

Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he had let Team Seven fall apart. Maybe it was his fault that he didn’t pick up the pieces afterwards.

But was it, really? It was _them_ who left. It was them who decided that he wasn’t enough for them. It was them — Sasuke, Naruto, Sakura — who walked away from him and down the path of life with new teachers, better teachers, ones more suited to fulfill their individual training needs.

Could he really be blamed for that?

Was the teacher the one who was supposed to keep the team together? They were young. They had their whole lives ahead of them. It was their job to forge relationships, it was their job to establish bonds. It was their job to hold things together.

What did Kakashi know about keeping things together anyway? He was the prime example of a failed commitment experiment. Team Minato had been scattered on the wind, his subordinate in ANBU, Itachi Uchiha, had defected to the Akatsuki after annihilating his entire clan save for Sasuke, his own family had been broken since the moment he was born. How could he ever hope to hold a team of altogether incompatible genin when he was just as incongruous himself?

Kakashi sighed. He wasn’t in the mood for ramen anymore. Placing a few ryou on the counter, he left the shop, venturing out into the busy streets of Konoha.

What the hell was he doing, crying over spilled milk?

Tomorrow, he would go to the Hokage’s office. He would go and beg her to give him a mission; anything at this point. He would even volunteer to catch the damn cat. He would go on a mission with a squad of twenty if it meant getting out of the village and away from all those disturbing thoughts.

That was what he needed — to get back on the horse and go on with the life he had always known. He was a shinobi, and a damn good one at that. Silly thoughts like that didn’t befit him. What was done, was done. There was no point in pondering over it. If the kids wanted to go, they could fucking _go_.

He wasn’t about to wait up for them.


	8. gotta get away

Kakashi lasted ten days in suspension. On the second Monday of the month, he was knocking down her door.

Tsunade wasn’t particularly surprised. Although she _had_ bet on five. It didn’t seem like her gambling luck would be changing any time soon. As the distressed Hatake stood unflinching before her, she made a mental note to pay Jiraiya back when he returned.

“I thought I made myself clear, Kakashi,” she told him, dismissing Shizune, who was hovering curiously by the door, with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t want to see hide nor hair from you for a while.”

Kakashi, however, seemed prepared for her reaction to his presence. “With all due respect, Hokage-sama, my leave of absence is insubstantial. I’m fine. I have taken ten days to myself to recover my strength and now I am capable of returning to the field. Lying around, being unproductive is good for neither me nor the village.”

Tsunade sighed. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t expecting this. “And your mental capacity?”

“I’m fine,” he replied _far_ too easily.

"So you’re saying you've had enough time to sort out your issues?"

Kakashi nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm ready for my mission."

It was bullshit and they both knew it. Kakashi looked like he was barely holding himself together. Alas, she was still short-staffed, what with many shinobi preparing themselves or their teams for the upcoming Chuunin exams in Suna in a few months. She had a drawer full of missions that required jounin skill level, but she had no people to assign them to.

Sooner or later, she would have to send Kakashi out again, whether she wanted to or not, she had known that from the very beginning. The only precaution she could take was put him on missions with other shinobi to keep an eye on him. Kakashi's mantra was to never leave a comrade behind, so she hoped that being on a team once again would calm down his late erratic behavior.

Tsunade hummed in return, reaching for a file that was resting on top of a small pile on her desk. She slid it towards him. "It's an A-rank two-man escort mission," she said, noting Kakashi's eagerness in his posture. He would be begging even for D-ranks by now.

"Madam Shizimi will be visiting her sister's family in our borders with the Land of Rivers. She needs protection to and fro, and during her stay there. She is scheduled to stay for four days. Considering the time it will take you to get there and return, you should be back in five to six days at most.”

“What kind of enemies are we looking out for?”

“To be honest, just your usual bandits and robbers. Although she is the daimyo’s wife, I doubt she would be targeted by enemy nin. The high rank of the mission is mostly a precaution, and well, Madam Shizimi does tend to exaggerate, and we are not to refuse her when she asks for the best protection available.” She leaned back in her seat. “Any other questions?"

Kakashi looked hastily over the file before turning his attention back to her. "You said it was a two-man job?”

Tsunade's eye twitched. She had been expecting this. "Yes. As I've told you before, Kakashi, you are not allowed to go on solo missions for a while. It is for the best of everyone in this village. Now, if you can't work with another shinobi for this mission—"

Kakashi raised his palm to silence her. That damn _brat_. She didn’t care if he was one of her best shinobi and the Yondaime’s student, if he made another move to disrespect her like that, she would hang him on her ceiling by his intestines. Thankfully, what he had to say seemed to quell her fury.

"There will be no issue, Hokage-sama. Who will be joining me?"

Tsunade shuffled through the files on her desk for a moment. She came up with a decidedly small book and flipped through it quickly, before tapping it shut. "Seeing that we are a little short on high-ranked shinobi at the moment, and taking into account that sending Gai with you will only jeopardize everyone's mental health as well as the mission—"

"That would be wise," Kakashi commented.

"—well, I'm going to go with Mitarashi Anko."

Kakashi stiffened at that. _Anko?_ Was that her idea of a joke? He had few personal affairs with Anko — they were mostly acquaintances and seldom comrades in arms — but as far as he knew, she was the least ideal partner for this mission. Or any mission, really. Where Kakashi was aloof, silent and mellow, Anko was loud, bold and bossy.

Not to mention that she got a kick out of terrorizing genin and had an uncanny thirst for blood.

Tsunade really had a sick sense of humor.

"Is there gonna be a problem with that?" Tsunade asked with a raised eyebrow.

However, he had long decided that he could not stand idle for a moment longer. Crazy or not, Anko's presence offered him a way out from this village and his depressing routine, and he would not waste this chance. It was only five days. If push came to shove, he could always just ignore her and keep to himself. Kami knew that he had mastered that art by being around Gai all these years.

"No, Hokage-sama,” he said at last. “I will find Mitarashi-san and inform her. When do we depart?"

"Tomorrow at dawn. You will pick up Madam Shizimi from the daimyo’s estate and then proceed to your destination. Don't be late," she warned with narrowed eyes.

Kakashi nodded. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

With a poof, he was gone.

Tsunade leaned forward to rest her chin on her propped fist. She was particularly interested in the outcome of this mission. Kakashi was clearly struggling with a lot of demons, but he still refused to acknowledge it and ask for help. Perhaps sending him on a mission with Anko was the wrong call, but it would certainly be a good trigger. If Kakashi blew up on her, then Tsunade would have every right in the world to demand that he got psychological help.

If he didn’t… Well, then maybe the Hatake wasn’t as much of an idiot as she thought. Maybe there was still hope for the man who thought he could shoulder the burdens of the world alone.

Tsunade’s eyes narrowed. _You better not screw this up, Kakashi._

* * *

 

Kakashi wasn’t sure what he had expected to find when he set off to find Anko. He knew that she worked in the Torture & Interrogation Department and that she was one of the proctors for the Chuunin exams. He also knew that she was relatively unstable and frequented in the little dango shop in downtown Konoha.

That day, he found out that she also had absolutely no organizing skills whatsoever.

"Mitarashi-san," Kakashi greeted almost tentatively, standing by the open door of her office. Or, more accurately, an office that seemed to have been recently attacked by enemy ninjas and lost the fight epically.

Anko looked up from the pile of papers on her desk, her eyes gleaming with surprise. "Well, well. If it isn't Konoha's own Copy Ninja. What brings you here, Hatake?"

Kakashi stepped over a trashcan that was inconveniently lying in the doorway and handed her the mission scroll. "Tsunade-sama has a mission for us."

Anko raised an eyebrow first at him and then at the scroll in her hands. She didn't open it. "A mission,” she repeated, earning a nod from him. “For _us_. Well, that’s new."

Kakashi stood there unmoving as she opened the scroll and began looking it over. She looked up a few moments later, her curious expression intact.

"We've never been on a mission together before. Why now?"

"Apparently, we are short-staffed," Kakashi recited back to her. _And the Gondaime wants to see just how far I can bend before I break._

He wasn’t really in the mood to go into detail about why Tsunade deemed it appropriate to send the two of them together on this mission. Was he supposed to tell Anko that she thought he was in need of a babysitter when he was away from the village? _Hell no_.

It was obvious that Anko thought it was a bad idea as well. It wasn't that their personalities clashed, not entirely, they just never happened to have a close relationship with each other. They had mutual friends and they might have even shared a few drinks from time to time, but they weren’t particularly interested in one another. Kakashi didn't feel like Anko was the right person to share his company with and apparently neither did she. It was a mutual unspoken agreement that was working out for all of them. Until Tsunade decided to break it.

Anko hummed in agreement. "Huh. Well, I guess I've got no choice then."

"It's a five day escort mission to the border," he offered. "The Hokage doubts there will be any threats along the way."

“Despite it being A-ranked?” Anko rolled her eyes, tapping a finger against the scroll. "So, more time for bonding then? _Great_."

It wasn't, not really. That was one of the reasons Kakashi hated escort missions. Barring the case where the escort was some high-ranked criminal that needed transport or a Kage themselves, they were generally boring. Battles were normally few and far in between, and they rarely posed a challenge. No, escort missions were long, uninteresting, and they only served to provide too much time in close quarters with your teammates. Who, in Anko’s case, he guessed, were very chatty.

But they were ninjas and they had to make the best of every bad situation if they wanted to move on.

"Let's set a few things straight first, Hatake," Anko began, standing and walking up to him, jabbing a finger at his chest. "I'm selfish, loud and easily bored. Will this be a problem?"

Normally, Kakashi didn’t allow himself to be stunned. But he was taken aback by her sudden confession. Racking his brains for an appropriate comeback, the only thing he managed to come up with was, "I prefer reading over talking."

Anko grinned, and Kakashi didn't like the look of it. "Good, then. It's gonna be a _blast_."

He _really_ hoped it wouldn't.


	9. moment killer

For quite possibly the first time in his life after Obito’s death, Kakashi arrived early. Or rather, earlier than usual. He was still half an hour late for the official start of their mission when he walked up to the village’s gates, but all Anko offered was a roll of her eyes as she hopped off the bench she was sitting on.

They set off towards the daimyo’σ estate without further ado. Anko chewed on a stick of dango as they walked and Kakashi stuck to his book. She tried starting up conversation a few times, mostly by throwing out comments about their surroundings, but after he returned everything with a nod or a grunt, she stopped.

Kakashi was grateful for the silence. However, even his book couldn’t keep his attention for more than ten minutes.

He may not have looked the part, but he was _elated._ After ten torturous days of suspension with nothing to do but wallow in pity about the miserable state of his life, he was finally back where he belonged — serving his village and protecting his friends.

Suddenly, everything seemed better. It was like he had been suffocating for the past ten days, fighting against drowning in a sea of emotions, and now he had finally come up to the surface and took in the breath of life.

Everything seemed to fade away — his past, his team, his pain. It was as if he was catatonic and the simple act of stepping outside the village gates had given him life again.

They reached the daimyo’s estate a couple of hours later, where Madam Shizimi was waiting for them in a carriage prepared specifically for this trip. She and her cat — who had only been returned to her a week prior by Team Eight, after having ran away for the millionth time — boarded the carriage, and less than half an hour later, they were back on the road. Kakashi had taken up guarding the right side of the carriage, while Anko guarded the left.

It was quiet, it was calm, and it was everything Kakashi had hoped for when he had set out that morning. Sure, he could do with a few bandits to stretch his muscles against, but he would not push his luck. For now, he was content to just keep walking and reading his book in the wonderful silence of the noon.

Anko, however, wasn’t.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you’d rather read than talk, huh?” she said as she appeared by his side, peering up at him with yet another dango stick in her hand.

“You’re supposed to be guarding the left side, Anko,” he reminded her in a flat tone, not removing his gaze from his book.

“I left a shadow clone, relax. Jeez, you always so uptight?”

Kakashi looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Are you always this nosy?”

Anko shrugged. “Mostly. Right now I’m just bored. We’ve been on the road for three hours and not as much as a single leaf has moved. I need a distraction.”

“This is an A-ranked mission, Anko,” he reminded her. “We can’t _afford_ distractions.”

Anko’s face scrunched up in disbelief as she pointedly stared him down. “Do I _infuriate_ you, Hatake? Or are you that much of a prick that people shouldn’t even try to talk to you?”

Kakashi sighed. He glanced upwards, praying to anyone who might be listening that he would be granted the strength to deal with this woman. “I’m just focusing on the mission, Anko. I suggest you do the same.”

“I _am_. That’s why I sent out two clones ahead of us two hours ago. So far so good. No baddies in sight.” Anko raised an eyebrow at his slight reaction to that information. “Don’t _you_ look surprised.”

“I am,” Kakashi admitted. He didn’t expect her to be so insightful. “I didn’t know you had such foresight.”

“Why, because I go after genin and scare the crap out of them? That’s a _hobby_.”

Kakashi tapped his book shut. It didn’t look like she was going to drop the conversation anytime soon. He might as well indulge her. “Well, if I recall correctly, there was that time during the Chuunin exams—”

“That was _one_ time!” Anko defended herself loudly. “How was I supposed to know that the kid had a history of panic attacks? He did get through Ibiki, after all. And we do hand out waivers for them to sign, you know. All things considered, it was his fault.”

“I don’t think it made any difference to him. I doubt he’ll be entering another exam ever again.”

“Well, he was a wuss. Wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in the forest anyway.”

“My team also mentioned that you were one of the scariest parts of the exam. And there was an _invasion_ during that time.”

“I live for the applause, what can I say,” Anko said as she chewed on yet another stick of dango. She had eaten five by last count and she somehow kept producing more from inside her coat. He made a mental note to ask later.

They had been walking in silence for a few minutes when Anko decided to speak up again.

“You know, I had a mission with one of your brats, not too long ago. The blonde."

"Naruto," he offered and watched her nod.

After the failed Sasuke Retrieval Mission, Sakura had begun her more intensive training under the Hokage. After recovering from his injuries, Naruto had gone on a number of missions with various squads, before Jiraiya came and made him his apprentice. Kakashi himself was doing recon on Orochimaru during that time, which had, of course, come up short.

"Yeah. It was him and a couple of other genin — the Aburame boy and Inoichi's kid. Talk about the time of my life."

Kakashi didn't know her well enough, but he could tell that her words were drenched in sarcasm. From what little he knew about Anko, he considered her a very straight-forward person who wasn’t willing to put up with a lot of bullshit before calling it. He couldn’t even imagine her leading a group of boisterous genin on a far-away mission. They would no doubt run down on her already slight patience.

Which suddenly piqued his interest. Anko was a tokubetsu jounin, specializing in torture and interrogation. She worked directly under Ibiki in Konoha’s T&I department and she also doubled as a proctor in the Chuunin exams. Why the hell would she be out on a mission with a bunch of genin?

Was the Hokage really getting that careless with mission assignments, or did she actually have a very sick sense of humor? He could only imagine Naruto’s face when Anko was appointed his jounin leader for that particular mission. Out of his three students, he seemed to fear her the most. He supposed that Anko had a hand in that.

"You're not a jounin instructor, Anko. Why did the Godaime give you a mission with a genin team?" he wondered earnestly.

Anko’s reaction made him flinch inwardly. Her eyes darkened and the mood instantly shifted. "That's none of your damn business, Hatake."

As she took a few steps forwards so that she wasn't walking by his side anymore, Kakashi sighed.

So much for an easy, uneventful mission.


	10. symbiosis

Anko ignored him for a whole day afterwards. Kakashi didn’t think he would be bothered by it — he had finally gotten his precious quiet time when he could read his book in peace — but he was.

If there was one thing to be told about Kakashi Hatake, it was that he valued teamwork above everything else. And being on bad terms with his partner during a mission shit on that value. He wasn’t too fond of Anko’s boisterous behavior, but he was bothered by its sudden absence. She hadn’t spoken to him even after they had reached their destination. When their hostess had shown them their respective rooms, she had slipped into hers without so much as a backwards glance.

Kakashi had his own fair share of demons to battle at night, and he didn’t like having to add Anko to them as well. His sleep was even more restless that night, if that was even possible. When she was still giving him the cold shoulder during breakfast, Kakashi decided that he would have to be the bigger man and apologize, even if he couldn’t see what he did wrong in the first place.

From what little experience he had with women in his life, it was better to apologize regardless of whether you were guilty of a misdeed or not.

He found her standing watch against a tree in the east side of the estate, overlooking a large part of it. Arming himself with every ounce of good will he could muster and bracing himself against the probable onslaught, he walked up to her.

"Hey," Kakashi greeted.

Anko gave him a suspicious look, and he guessed that whatever he might have unknowingly pressed her into was a pretty touchy subject.

He took a breath. _Here goes nothing_.

"I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn't have pried."

"Hm," Anko murmured. He half expected her to say that he hadn't, but he supposed he shouldn't expect much. She kept her gaze locked on the large yard ahead of them, where Madam Shizimi and her sister were having their tea under the morning sun.

“Can we go back to talking to each other?” Kakashi asked, tilting his head to the side.

“I thought you preferred reading over talking.”

“I do, usually. But I also prefer to sleep without the fear of an impending attack.”

At that, Anko’s cold demeanor seemed to crack, as the left corner of her lips tugged upwards in a small smirk. He had a feeling that she had been struggling too much to hold it up anyway. “Why, Hatake, where you scared I’d sic my snakes on you while you slept?”

“Something like that.”

“But where would the fun be in that? I wouldn’t watch you squirm.”

Kakashi thrust his hands in his pockets, looking at her with his one good eye. “Vindictive, aren’t you? I didn’t know I had struck a nerve.”

Anko waved him off, having apparently already forgiven him for whatever it was he had done wrong. As far as bipolar people went, he figured Anko made the top ten.

“It’s been a rough month,” she explained casually. “It doesn’t take much to tick me off these days. So, consider yourself warned.”

“Duly noted,” he said, before making a small pause. He wasn’t sure if he should proceed with his next question, but for some reason conversing with Anko sounded better than reading Icha Icha Paradise in solitude. “Can I ask why it’s a rough month or am I risking another day of you being mad?”

Anko shot him a mock glare, before grinning. “I think you’re safe,” she said, before giving a dramatic sigh. “You see, I was appointed proctor in the upcoming Chuunin exams in Suna and I’ve been drowning in paperwork for the better part of the month. My nerves are stretched unimaginably thin.”

Kakashi looked puzzled. “Won’t Suna have their own proctors?”

“They will, but given that it’s the first official joint examination since our peace treaty, they want a Konoha proctor for the first exam.”

He nodded knowingly. “And that’s how you got stuck with the job.”

Which wasn’t surprising at all, when he thought about it. Anko had been proctoring the Chuunin exams in Konoha for the past seven years and, Orochimaru’s latest invasion notwithstanding, she had been doing an excellent work so far.

“Sort of,” she said. “I’m in charge of our entering teams, the group formations, their transportation and generally every loose end on our part. And to top that off, I got to train Shikamaru in the art of being a proctor.”

Okay, _now_ he was confused. “Shikamaru? I thought you were proctoring the exam.”

Anko shook her head. “Nope. The Hokage thought that the kid had far too much time on his hands and too little to do with it, so she kinda forced it on him. And guess who’s the lucky gal that gets to teach him how to kick ass.”

Kakashi hummed in agreement. He did feel kind of bad for her. Shikamaru was a smart kid, but his work ethic was abysmal. Asuma always said that motivating him to do some actual training was a quest on its own. No wonder Anko was edgy. His own short-lived experience as a teacher had taught him that trying to mentor kids required a lot of patience, which he was certain that Anko did not possess.

Hell, even he had come close to losing it a handful of times with them.

“Kids do require a lot of work,” he told her.

“Uhuh,” she said, plopping down on the grass. “With that kid’s brains, we could have been done in a week, but no, he just has to take his sweet time and drag us all through the mud with him. That lazy prick.”

Kakashi smiled under his mask at the comment.

Anko looked up at him. “If Shikamaru’s that bad by himself, I can only imagine what having a whole team must be like. Freaking nightmare, huh?”

 _How could I know?_ Kakashi thought bitterly to himself. If he were to be honest with himself, he would admit that during the supposed lifespan of Team Seven, the kids had spent more time with other mentors than with him. And they certainly had learned a lot more things from them than they did from him.

Shaking his head, Kakashi sat down as well, crossing his legs and resting his chin on his propped up fist. "Aa, they are a handful. Although, keeping them in line isn't that hard. Managing to teach them a thing or two is another story."

Anko nodded. "Bet your team got the best part of the deal though. The first team you passed if the rumors are true."

 _Lot of good that did to all of us_ , he thought dejectedly, before nodding. "They are."

"What was so special about those three then? Why did you pass them?"

"They showed promise," was his easy answer, though he couldn't keep the bite from his words. Yeah, right. And what promise they did show, they decided to cultivate it under different teachers. Ungrateful brats.

"Mhm. You sure that's it?" she asked with a smirk.

Kakashi sighed. He didn’t know what had possessed Anko to drag their discussion towards that particular direction, but he didn’t like it. These kinds of conversations drained him. He figured he should let the subject drop before it went any further. "I don't know, Anko. Maybe I am getting sentimental in my old age."

At this, she laughed, and Kakashi was momentarily astounded. Unlike most people, her laugh was uninhibited and heartfelt. Like there was no force powerful enough in the world that could hold it back in her chest if she chose to set it free. It was also kind of scary. The sound of a rattlesnake’s tail as it slid through the glass, deadly and venomous. He didn’t know if that particular combination was a good or a bad thing, but it was enough to make him shiver.

"You're not that old, Kakashi," she patronized, earning an eye-roll from him. "Besides, we all have our breaking point, yeah? They must have been yours."

Kakashi flinched, though he hoped Anko didn't see it. There it was again, that phrase. _Breaking point_. Tsunade had mentioned it briefly in their recent meetings, when she referred to his fragile mental state. But he was not broken, damn it. It was just a team. He had passed through several teams in his twenty eight years. He wasn’t about to let the disbandment of a team of whiny brats get to him. Why couldn’t they understand that? He was _fine_.

"I mean," Anko continued, not minding him one bit as she spoke her mind, "there's only so much you can tolerate before you have to do something. I bet the Hokage would have kept assigning you teams until you passed one. No getting out of that one, for sure."

He relaxed. Okay, she hadn't implied the other thing. Why had he panicked like that? He wasn't broken, he wasn't upset, and he sure as hell wasn't depressed. Everything was fine. He should stop taking everything as a personal insult. Anko didn’t know him. She didn’t know what he had been through. There was no way she could have reached the same — false — conclusion that Tsunade had.

"Probably,” he said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “The Sandaime thought it was about time I shouldered some actual responsibility."

"You? Konoha's Copy Ninja was considered _irresponsible_?" She laughed again, louder now. "If that was the word on the street for you, then I don't wanna know what they said about me."

Crazy snake lady, dango-crazed freak, bloodthirsty jounin, traitor—that's what they said. And Anko knew it as much as he did.

It was no secret that the village looked down on her even after all these years. It was an unfounded fear in Kakashi’s mind. Anko despised Orochimaru more than anyone else in the shinobi world, and she would gladly give her life to take him down if the opportunity presented itself. Her abandonment by her sensei had cost her a lot, but it had made her stronger, smarter, and fiercely loyal to Konoha.

And yet the village still mistrusted her, whispering as she passed by, giving her fearful glances left, right and center. Kakashi didn’t understand it. Sure, he think of Anko as the most ordinary individual, but he definitely didn’t doubt her loyalty. However, there was no reason to mention any of this and ruin their camaraderie. They were finally starting to get along and there was no need to ruin that.

Kakashi shrugged, leaning back to lie on the grass, his hands clasping behind his head. "We're all works in progress."

Anko nodded mindlessly, her gaze drawn to the sky. "Yeah. I bet we are."


	11. the sharpest tool

Anko bit her lower lip as her eyes bore intensely into the object of her attention. "I hate shogi."

"You are two matches ahead," Kakashi deadpanned.

Her eyes slowly lifted to stare at him. "Those facts aren't mutually exclusive, you know."

"I suppose they're not."

"Checkmate," Anko said triumphantly after a moment, moving her king in the square next to his. " _Finally._ "

Kakashi sighed in defeat. He wondered how much better she would play if she actually enjoyed the game. She had won three matches in a row without the bat of an eyelash — excluding the occasional nagging about the game itself. Kakashi thought of himself as a very perceptive person and a good strategist at that, but for the love of him, he could not figure out Anko’s strategy as the game panned out.

He had never considered her as an insightful person, but she had proven him wrong time and time again on this mission. On the one hand, there was her unwavering professionalism when it came to the actual mission. Even though she had made her distaste known on various instances, she didn’t once waver from her patrol duties. On the other hand, there was her uncanny ability to beat him in shogi. He briefly wondered if she had been playing against Shikamaru in the time she had been mentoring him. It would explain her amazing skill.

"Only you would use the king as a main attacking piece," he said as he began putting away the pieces.

"The point is to create an element of surprise, which I did," she said smugly, taking in his dejected stance. "Oh, don't sour, Hatake. You can't be the best in everything."

“I wasn’t aiming to.”

Anko hummed in mock agreement and stared out towards the open field. It was dark, just a little after dusk and the world was slowly falling asleep.

Most of their mission had gone by uneventfully. They had encountered a couple of bandits along their way there, but it was nothing the two jounin couldn’t handle. After their initial fight, things had moved along smoothly. Kakashi wouldn’t dare say it out loud, but he actually enjoyed Anko’s company. Sure, she was loud, and a bit nosy, but she knew how to tell a joke and he had to admit that the stories that he had been forced to listen to had been kind of interesting. He had been colleagues with Genma for years, and yet he had never known so many details about his life as he did after some of Anko’s stories about the other jounin.

That was another thing he had learned about Anko; she was a terrible gossip. She didn’t even do it out of curiosity. She just felt bored more often than not and decided to prod this person or the other about their lives. Kakashi couldn’t understand why they would actually tell her, but then again, Anko could be rather scary when she wanted to.

In those few days, Kakashi had also learned not to doubt her intellect. Not that he had thought of her as dense before. She was working in T&I, after all. The human mind was her playground. To assume she was ignorant was about the worst move you could make.

That was why he wasn’t precisely surprised by her exclamation, a few moments later.

"It doesn't add up, you know.”

"What doesn't?" he asked, leaning back against one of the pillars of the porch. Soon, they would have to start their night patrol around the estate.

"The _mission_ , Hatake,” Anko scoffed. “I’ve been thinking about this. You’re an elite shinobi, probably one of the strongest we’ve got at the moment — and I’m not saying that to stroke your ego — and the Hokage just casually sends you out on a lousy escort mission with _me_ , of all people? I bet there’s dozens of actual A and S-ranked missions waiting for you to take on.”

He sighed deeply. “This _is_ an A-ranked mission, Anko.”

“Please, Hatake. Don’t insult my intelligence. We left Konoha four days ago. And since then, the only potential threat we’ve encountered were those lowlife bandits. Don’t try to convince me that this is anything more than a C-rank in everything _but_ the paycheck.”

“It’s not my job to evaluate mission rankings. I am a shinobi and so are you. We do as we are told.”

“But _this,_ ” she gestured at their surroundings, “this is reckless thinking. The Hokage is wasting away Konoha’s human resources. I have my hands full with the upcoming Chuunin exams and you are perfectly equipped for high-ranked missions. Yet here we are, both of us wasting away on a freaking chuunin mission. Why is she doing this?”

“I requested this mission, Anko,” Kakashi said at last. It wasn’t a total lie, although his reasoning behind it couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“What?” Anko asked in surprise. “Why?”

“As you said, I am an elite shinobi. So are you. And while we have both been on countless missions before, we have little to zero experience of working together. Now, as I’m sure you know, we are currently heavily understaffed. The Sound/Suna invasion a few months ago has dealt a blow in our forces. Jounin are almost hard to come by nowadays. So the few of us left, we can’t afford to be unacquainted with each other. We have to know each other’s skills, techniques and fighting styles, in case things go downhill again. We can’t march into war with uncoordinated forces. And we definitely can’t risk being caught in our sleep again.”

Even _he_ was impressed with his bullshit make-up story. He wondered why everyone had so much trouble believing his excuses. He was clearly a natural at this, if Anko’s pondering look was anything to judge by.

“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there. But this—” she made a vague gesture again, “—is still stupid. Couldn’t she have waited for a bigger fish to throw our way if she wanted to test our teamwork?”

 _She could_ , Kakashi thought. _Me, on the other hand…_

“I don’t know, Anko. My only speculation is that the Hokage didn’t want to risk an untested combination on a more complicated mission. Maybe she wanted to see if we simply managed to get along first.”

“So what are we, then? Test subjects?” she asked angrily. Clearly, being doubted was not something she took lightly. He couldn’t blame her. “This situation stinks, and I’m gonna talk it out with the Hokage the moment we get back. We’re not children, for fuck’s sake.”

Kakashi’s mind clamped down on that bit of information. What if Anko went through with that and Tsunade told her the truth? That he had asked for any mission at all, regardless of its conditions? That he just couldn’t bear to spend another day in the village in fear of losing his mind?  
  
His heart skipped a beat. What if she told Anko that he was depressed? It would be a fat blatant lie, of course, but it could still damage his reputation. And the last thing he wanted was Anko snooping around in his business, gossiping about him with the rest of the jounin behind his back. No, he wasn’t going to risk that.

“I hope your discomfort doesn’t derive from my company, Anko,” he offered, trying to take her mind off the subject of their conversation and her blatant disagreement on Tsunade’s orders.

Anko laughed loudly at that and Kakashi considered himself safe for now. The mood was alleviated. “ _Men_. You always think it’s about you, don’t you?”

Kakashi shrugged. “I wouldn’t know what else to think, given your clear indignation towards being on a mission with me.”

A sly smirk tugged at her lips. “Trust me, Hatake, if I had a problem with you, you would have noticed.”

He had no doubts about that.

“So, you want to take the east or the west wing tonight?” Kakashi asked, standing up and offering her a hand, which she disregarded and scrambled to her feet.

“ _Ugh,_ do we really have to do this? No one’s gonna bother attacking this place.”

“Come on, Mitarashi. It could have been worse.”

Anko rolled her eyes and gave him an indignant look. “Pray tell, _how_ could that ever happen?”

“I could have been Gai,” he offered with a smirk and watched as Anko’s face contorted in horror at the possible prospect.

“Yeah, point made.” She walked past him and patted his chest. “I’ll take the west wing.”

Kakashi watched her until she disappeared behind the corner. Catastrophe averted.


	12. there and back again

The trip back to Konoha was swift. Madam Shizimi had ushered them to make haste on their way back, because she was apparently feeling homesick — if such thing was even possible after only four days.

Anko had looked pleased at the prospect of getting home earlier than planned and going back to work. Kakashi, on the other hand, couldn’t help feeling a little reluctant about going back. Returning to Konoha meant returning to his problems and that their unexpectedly pleasant mission would come to an end. As averse as he had originally been to being partnered with Anko for this mission, the five days spent in her presence had proved him completely wrong.

Kakashi had been pleasantly surprised when he had come to the realization that Anko was not as bad a company as he originally believed. Like so many others, he had fallen victim to the public’s opinion of her. He mentally berated himself for not seeing underneath the underneath, like he had always instructed his students to do.

Anko was a peculiar individual, but nothing she did attested to everything she had been branded as by the village. When it came to their five days together, her initial snapping notwithstanding, he would even dare to go as far as to say that he had _fun_.

Missions weren’t supposed to be fun. They were supposed to either be tedious or to give you a rush of adrenaline. You were not supposed to enjoy yourself during a mission; it was almost impossible to.

But Kakashi had. And he knew that it had everything to do with Anko. He had been on countless missions with numerous shinobi throughout his life, but this was the first time he had felt like this. It had felt like a vacation that wasn’t forced and actually aimed at making him feel better.

He was even more shocked when he realized that in five days, he had scarcely allowed himself to think of his past misdeeds and the burdens that weighed him down.

He didn’t know how in the world Anko had managed to do _that_ — he guessed her incessant rambling played a big part — but he could use a lot more of it. Not that he was in any particular hurry to admit that to her or to the Godaime. He did have a reputation to uphold, and favoritism among colleagues was generally frowned upon.

But maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t mind being assigned a mission with Anko again in the near future. And maybe he could put in a good word for her to the Hokage about her mission performance.

The pair made their way through the gates of Konoha in the early afternoon, when the sun was just beginning to recline from its highest position in the sky. It was a busy time of the day in Konoha, with the Academy students having their recess and most shinobi having their lunch breaks. He supposed Anko was in a hurry to have her own lunch because she dropped all conversation and her pace picked up noticeably once they entered the village.

Kakashi shook his head and allowed the purple-haired kunoichi to lead the way to the Hokage Tower.

* * *

 

"Kakashi, Anko. I wasn't expecting you back so early," Tsunade said as the two jounin stepped inside her office.

"Madam Shizimi insisted on making haste on our way back," Kakashi spoke up, seeing that Anko had no intention of doing so herself. "She was eager to get back to her home."

"I see,” the Hokage hummed in response. “I'm expecting your report first thing in the morning tomorrow, Kakashi. For now, anything you'd like to note?"

"No, ma'am. The mission went smoothly and without surprises."

"Alright. Kakashi, you are dismissed. Anko, I want to talk to you about the Chuunin exams, if you may."

They both bowed to the Hokage and Kakashi left the office, nodding to Anko in passing. She walked up to stand closer to the Hokage's desk, and happily plopped on one of the empty chairs when Tsunade gestured her to.

"Is this about the Meoki kid? Because I've been working my ass off trying to find him a team. He just won't fit! He overthrows the balance of every team I try throwing him in!" Anko defended herself.

Tsunade lifted a hand to silence her. "As strenuous as I'm sure this issue is, no. I have faith in your judgement and your abilities where it concerns the Chuunin exams, Anko. The Sandaime had assigned them on you numerous times in the past and I don't see a reason why I shouldn't. Now, what I want to talk to you about is Kakashi."

Anko raised an eyebrow in confusion at the Hokage’s twist in conversation. "Hatake? What about him?"

"How was your mission? Did you two have any problems with each other at all?"

Anko frowned. "With all due respect, Hokage-sama, I know I am not the easiest person to get along with, but even I know not to let my idiosyncrasies get in the way when it comes to a mission. I may not be the most stable individual, but in my job, I am professional as f—"

"I know, Anko. You have proved your argument plenty of times and I am grateful. Kakashi is who I'm worried about. Did he create any problems during your mission?"

"Problems?” the snake mistress repeated, her face scrunching up in thought. “No, not at all. I mean, sure, he read more than he talked, but he made that clear before we went off and I was okay with it."

"I see,” Tsunade mused. She clasped her hands together in front of her. “Well, that's good news. I had my qualms about sending him on this mission."

"Why? We both know it was actually a C-rank. The only reason it was ranked A was because Madam Shizimi wanted the best protection money could buy, right?"

"You're not wrong."

"But what I don’t get is why you sent both of us. In fact, why did you send _us_? This was easily a chuunin's job."

The Hokage knew that it would inevitably come to that at some point. Anko was no idiot. She didn’t doubt that she would have her own qualms about being sent on a particularly easy mission, especially when she already had her hands full with the Chuunin exams. However, informing her of Kakashi’s illness was not an option. Even if Kakashi himself wasn’t in denial about it, it still wasn’t Tsunade’s right to advertise his condition to the rest of the world.

But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t tell Anko part of the truth.

"I won't lie to you, Anko,” Tsunade began, leaning a bit forward on her desk. “Kakashi requested this mission himself. The truth is, I’ve been sending him on solo missions for too long. Naturally, he was reluctant about a two-man mission. But we all know that teamwork is the backbone of our shinobi nation. There's only so many missions you can take on by yourself before it starts to take its toll on you. I wanted him to get reacquainted with what it meant being in a team again. And, well..."

Anko nodded solemnly, as if she understood exactly what the Hokage meant to imply. "You picked me because if he can get along with me, then he'll be able to get along with anyone."

"You did say you were not the easiest person to get along with."

"Well, I’m not gonna deny it. I’ve spend a great deal of time building my reputation,” she said smugly. Then, her expression became curious. “So, this wasn't about preparing the remaining jounin for war by making them acquainted to each other's fighting styles and abilities, huh?"

Tsunade’s eyebrows raised in confusion at that. War? What on Earth was she talking about? "No. Did Kakashi tell you that?"

"He speculated,” Anko said with a shrug.

"It wasn't my objective, but it is extremely thoughtful now that I think about it.” The Godaime chuckled while shaking her head. “That Kakashi. He should have made Hokage instead of me."

"Well, he _is_ a genius."

"If only he was punctual.”

“And less of a pervert.”

Tsunade nodded in agreement. “Anyway, you are certain there were no abnormalities in his behavior?"

"None than I could discern, Hokage-sama."

"And you worked well together?"

"Like a well-oiled machine."

Tsunade eyed the jounin for a moment, looking for any sign of dishonesty in her expression. When she found none, she nodded. "Well, in that case, you are dismissed. I'll send word if I have any more questions after Kakashi hands me the report, but I think we're okay."

Standing up from her seat, Anko bowed respectfully and exited the office, leaving Tsunade to bite on her fingernail in thought.

 _Kakashi and Anko, eh? Now that wasn’t a recipe I would have considered to work. I wonder…_ she trailed off in her mind, a smirk pulling at the corner of her lips. _You haven’t seen the last of this, Hatake._


	13. phase two

Contrary to Kakashi, Anko didn't put much thought into their mission. It had been five unexpectedly pleasant days away from her hectic duties revolving around the Chuunin exams, but that was it. She had gotten some fresh air and now she was able to get back on the horse. She still had a long way to go with Shikamaru's mentoring, after all.

What she did allow herself to briefly ponder on, however, was her conversation with the Hokage after the mission.

Kakashi Hatake having to be reintroduced to working with a team after spending what was apparently too much time on solo missions—the Hokage must have thought of her as an idiot. Kakashi was one of the best shinobi Konoha had. She doubted that he, of all people, would have a problem jumping back into teamwork after going solo for a while. Kakashi's entire _cosmology_ relied on teamwork.

Anko suspected that the Hokage's strategy stemmed from the disbandment of Kakashi's genin team earlier that year. After the Uchiha had defected to her own treacherous former mentor, the other two genin had quickly sought out other mentors as well. Kakashi had quickly been left with no team at all.

Word on the grapevine was that he had been acting weird after that, but she had never really known Kakashi personally, so she had nothing to compare his current behavior to. More than that, she didn't actually care.

To each their own, after all. If Kakashi wanted to lead only solo missions after his team broke apart, he should do that. She didn't understand the Hokage's insistence on him getting back on two-man missions, and she didn't want to put too much thought into it anyway. She had more important stuff to deal with.

For now, she was just content with being back to her office, doing work that she pretended to hate but secretly loved.

And that plan was coming along handsomely, until she found Kakashi sitting in one of the spare chairs — reading his book and looking as nonchalant as always — when she walked into her office one bright morning, three days after their mission.

"Yo, Mitarashi."

 _Three goddamn days._ She had work to do, why didn't anyone seem to comprehend that?

"We have another mission."

"You've got to be kidding me," she all but yelled. "I'm _working_ here. I have an international crisis just waiting to happen on my hands. And you want me to go gallivanting the mountains for fat rich people?"

Kakashi shrugged, although she was under the impression that the prick was enjoying this. "Hokage's orders."

Anko ignored him pointedly as she slammed her coffee on her desk and stomped to the Hokage Tower.

* * *

Tsunade sighed when she heard the distinctive clatter that everyone in Konoha associated with Mitarashi Anko outside of her office.

She could imagine Shizune trying to hold her back, and failing spectacularly. After all, Anko's wrath was only second to Tsunade's own. Although Sakura was coming along nicely lately.

"To what do I owe this visit, Anko?" Tsunade asked without looking up from her paperwork when Anko stomped inside.

With a wave of her hand, she dismissed Shizune, who was standing horrified at the doorway.

Anko crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not Hatake's caretaker."

Tsunade looked up with a raised eyebrow. "I didn't assume you were."

"Then why are you sending me on another mission with him when I clearly got my hands full with the Chuunin exams? Surely, it has nothing to do with my last debriefing?"

Tsunade sighed, pushing the document she had been reviewing to the side. "I am putting you on this mission with him because I want to test your teamwork. Madam Shizimi was very pleased with your escort and her recommendation of your team was glorious, to say the least."

Anko blinked, baffled. "Really?"

"Indeed. However, I am not one to take anyone's words so lightly, thus I want to evaluate your teamwork on a more demanding mission. Also, as I've told you before, Kakashi hasn't been on team missions in a while. I don't see the point of putting him on various teams so soon. He worked well with you before and I'm sure this time will be the same. You are a dependable shinobi, Anko. I know this mission will be good for you both."

"Uh, thanks?" Anko said in confusion. It wasn't often that the Godaime praised her. Then, something seemed to dawn on her. "About the Chuunin exams—"

"I have Genma footing your work for the time being. Ibiki wasn't pleased, but he knows better than to complain, at least to me."

Anko nodded absentmindedly. She kind of pitied Genma. Ibiki was a lot to handle on his good days, but an upset Ibiki was a force to be reckoned with. She could already imagine the bloodbath she would come home to.

"Now, if there isn't anything else, I'd like to go back to my work. And you have a mission to get ready for. Kakashi will brief you on the details. You leave at midday."

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Anko said, bowing slightly before showing herself out.

"And Anko," Tsunade called, making Anko turn her head. The Hokage smirked darkly. "If you ever barge in like that again, I will move you to Danzou's personal detail."

With a gulp, Anko nodded and sprinted out.

* * *

Not unexpectedly, Kakashi was waiting for her at the entrance of the Hokage Tower, leaning casually against one of the nearby trees. He pocketed his book when he saw her approach.

"Hello."

"Don't hello me," Anko said, jabbing a finger at him. "This is all your fault."

If he flinched momentarily, she didn't notice. "And how is that?"

"Don't act so innocent. You know how busy I am with work, I _told_ you. And what do you do when the Hokage gives you another mission with me? Well, not ask for a different partner, that's for sure!"

"Why, Anko, I'm just a lowly jounin. Surely you can't expect me to defy the Hokage's orders."

Anko glared at him, her hands posed on her hips. "You are the absolute worst, Hatake. Give me the mission parameters."

Suddenly, the playful crinkle of his eye was gone and he was all business. "Reconnaissance mission in Kusa."

"Rank?"

"A. We have intel of a rebellious group causing stir in the border."

"Estimated mission time?"

"Two to four days," Kakashi said finally, and Anko let out a relieved sigh.

Some good news, at last. Four days meant that she wouldn't get too far behind in her work, and there was still a slight chance that she wouldn't find a bloodbath in her office when she got back.

To be fair, there was still a long way to go until the Chuunin exams. They had a good three months until then and most procedures were already underway. But Anko was not a procrastinator, and completely hated being late for anything. Since half of the exams were relying on her, she would make damn sure everything was perfect and perfectly on time.

And these sudden little missions with Hatake were interfering with that plan.

Anko eyed him carefully, not quite sure what she was looking for. It wasn't that she didn't like Kakashi. He was indifferent to her at the very best. Sure, their last mission had gone by smoothly, and she had even enjoyed their banter, but that wasn't a testament to wanting to work with him twenty-four-seven. She had a very demanding job to do, after all, and she didn't enjoy it when she was forced to leave it on the side to go play babysitter.

But there was something about him. In the way he didn't squirm under her gaze, in the way he seemed to be immune to her flirty slash snide remarks, in the way he had gone out of his way to spend time with her during their last mission even though he didn't have to.

There weren't a lot of people who willingly sought her out. She was Konoha's resident scary snake lady, and she was pretty damn proud of that nickname. And Kakashi… well, he was a mystery. And if there was one thing Anko enjoyed — other than pushing people to their limits and grinning at the results it produced — that was a good mystery.

Maybe they could both benefit from these missions, after all.

"You have to make this worth my while, Hatake."

Kakashi raised an amused eyebrow. "I was under the impression that you didn't like being teamed up with me."

"I don't. But if I can't avoid it, the least I can do is enjoy it."

He pulled his book out of his hip pouch and started to walk away. "I'm not a babysitter."

"Not even for a babe such as myself?"

If he briefly tripped over his feet in surprise, he had the courtesy to walk it off, ignoring her heaps of laughter that ensued.

 

 


	14. miss independent

Anko felt bone tired as she dragged her feet to the Academy. She had come back from an infiltration mission with Kakashi late the previous night, and they had stayed up until the early hours of the morning in order to compile their reports. Since they had been separated for a good portion of the mission, Kakashi thought it was imperative to write a joint report, in order to fill in each other's blank spots.

She was fairly certain that he was just trying to get on her nerves.

After their second successful mission, it seemed that the Hokage had somehow been convinced that they were the new dream team of Konoha. In the past month and a half, she and Kakashi had completed six missions of varying length, rank and type. The Hokage hadn't approached her to ask after Kakashi again, but Anko could tell that she was satisfied with the current predicament. Sometimes she wondered if the Godaime had an ulterior motive behind assigning them on missions together all the time.

But it didn't do well to dwell on things she didn't want to be thinking about, so Anko pushed those thoughts away from her mind as soon as they came. It wasn't like she would be getting a clear answer from the Hokage — or Kakashi, for that matter — even if she kept prodding them.

Choose your battles and all that.

She would be lying if she said that she had come any closer to unravelling the mystery that was Kakashi Hatake. The man was closed off like a shell, cryptic and infuriating as they came. However, if nothing else, his strange behavior made Anko even more intrigued as time passed.

Surprisingly, over the course of the previous month, they hadn't had any incident between them. Kakashi mostly ignored her or talked his way out of the conversation when her questions became a bit too prying for his taste, but that didn't stop him from bantering back and forth with her when the situation called for it. She had yet to convince him to join her for drinks after a mission, but she had a feeling that his resolve was close to breaking — people let down their barriers when they were drinking, and that's what Anko was counting on to get some long-awaited answers.

However, for the time being, she had been promised by the Hokage herself that they would get a week off of missions. Anko had put her foot down and demanded some time to focus solely on the Chuunin exams. She had been checking in on the progress of her colleagues as frequently as she could in between missions, and surprisingly it hadn't been as bad as she had first expected.

She had known both Genma and Ibiki for most of her life, but she hadn't expected them to cooperate as well as they did. Ibiki was goal-oriented, precise and straightforward, while Genma was a lazy prick who procrastinated everything. When the Godaime had first assigned Genma to replace her when she was away, Anko had naturally had her doubts. However, it seemed that despite his natural inclinations towards laziness, Genma was actually putting effort into the Chuunin exams.

Mentoring Shikamaru, though? A complete and absolute failure. She was surprised that the kid hadn't been sent off to Ibiki at this point.

"Now, there's a face we haven't seen in a long time," Genma said as she entered her — now their — office. "How's life, Mitarashi?"

"Fuck off, Genma," she said, kicking out her chair and plopping down on it dramatically.

"Feisty as ever, I see. You back for good?"

Anko shrugged, studying the board to evaluate the progress that was made in her absence. "Until the Godaime decides to send me out again. Should be a week, at least."

"What's with all the missions all of a sudden? She was the one who chose the proctors for the exams, after all. She knows how busy you are."

"Well, apparently, I'm Hatake's on call babysitter. And since he's her most valuable shinobi, I'm supposed to drop everything and run to his aid every time he breaks a nail."

"Is Kakashi-sensei alright?" Shikamaru asked from his desk, his head resting on his arms. Anko shot him a glare; the piece of shit was _dozing off._ On the job.

"He's an idiot is what he is."

Genma sniggered at her. "Maybe she's trying to set you up."

Anko snorted and threw him a balled up paper that she picked from the trashcan. She would have slapped him upside the head, but there was no way she would get up from her seat before having at least two cups of coffee.

"Shikamaru, go get me coffee," she commanded the young Nara, who begrudgingly got up from his seat and left the room. Then, she turned to Genma. "What the fuck does that mean?"

Genma shrugged, sliding a few scrolls to her. "Maybe she's on a bet or something."

"A bet?" she asked incredulously. "For me and Hatake no less? You're a fucking moron."

"Just throwing out ideas here," Genma said with a shrug, but Anko knew better. That man lived for gossip. If Anko was bad, then he was the worst. "How's Kakashi anyway? I've hardly seen him around lately."

"Same way he always is, I guess. Moody, stuck-up, lazy. Why do you ask?"

"We went out for drinks a while ago and he got really drunk. Then he stormed out like he was crazy." He took his senbon out of his mouth and twirled it between his fingers. "Come to think of it, he kind of acted crazy all night. Got mad at one thing or the other. It was strange."

"Ugh, who knows. That man's a fucking jigsaw puzzle," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Anyway, screw Hatake. What do we got?"

Genma's grin was evil. "Your favorite."

Taking one look at the scroll before her, Anko promptly banged her head on the desk. "Not the Meoki kid!"

* * *

 

Once again, Kakashi felt like he couldn't breathe. A couple of days had passed since his last mission, and he was already feeling like the walls were closing in on him.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do. Being on missions was rejuvenating, but even he knew that he couldn't spend all of his life jumping from one assignment to another. His body was already complaining about the strain he was putting it under. He had to fix this thing that was eating at him soon if he wanted to get back to normal.

The problem was that he had no idea what was wrong.

He had come to terms with the disbandment of his team, no matter how mad he had been about it. It was okay. They had left. Big fucking deal. It wasn't the first time he had been left alone in his life. If nothing else, he shouldn't be even slightly bothered by now.

But he was, by this or something else — he didn't know, and it was driving him crazy.

To get his mind off the dark thoughts that wouldn't leave him alone for a second, he had decided take Asuma up on the offer he had made for lunch a few weeks past. They had found a table in Yaniniku Q (Kakashi suspected that the place had given Asuma a permanent discount, seeing how often he treated his students to lunch there) and talked shop as they waited for their food to arrive.

Asuma had been a close friend for years, and he was actually one of the few people Kakashi trusted wholeheartedly. He supposed that he still owed the older man one, seeing that Asuma, Kurenai, and Gai were the ones responsible for him being pulled out of ANBU before it could destroy him completely. The two of them had fought countless battles side by side, and Kakashi was glad for the man's discretion. He never pushed and never pried, which was why Kakashi had sought him out in the first place.

However, it was inevitable that conversation would at some point get back to their former genin teams.

"It's too quiet without them, huh?" Asuma said with a nostalgic look in his face.

Kakashi resumed his drink undisturbed, completely uninterested in the turn the conversation was taking. "It's different."

"Good or bad?"

Kakashi shrugged. He hadn't really classified the feeling as positive or negative; it just was.

Asuma leaned back in his seat. "Either way, it's a change of pace. It takes time to get adjusted to."

Kakashi nodded absent-mindedly, but the gears of his brain were turning. Could it be that this was that his problem? That he hadn't given himself time to adjust?

"It just flies by so quickly, you know. Shikamaru has been a chuunin forever now and Chouji and Ino are preparing for the Chuunin exams themselves. Soon, I'll be out of a job."

Yes, he knew all that already. And he also knew, courtesy of Kurenai, that Sakura was entering with Asuma's team as well. And it made his chest clench a bit.

"You'll be free to take on actual missions again," Kakashi offered.

"I know. But I don't miss that. Not really. What I am going to miss is their whining. Gods, they're always whining about one thing or the other. Either Ino thinks the ground is too muddy, or Chouji is hungry, or Shikamaru wants to sleep. They're an awful lot, but I guess I've gotten used to it. I'm gonna miss it."

Kakashi didn't.

He didn't miss his students' whining and their bickering because he couldn't remember it. He couldn't remember the sound of Sakura's shriek or Naruto's laugh or Sasuke's growl. He couldn't remember what they used to talk about or Naruto's choice of curses towards Sasuke or how many times Sakura rejected his attempts to ask for a date.

He could scarcely remember _them_ nowadays, he now realized, and it was scaring him shitless.

"I'll miss those brats," Asuma repeated wistfully.

"Yeah," Kakashi replied skeptically, realizing for the first time that he did.


	15. cheap thrills

Anko was mildly annoyed when she stepped inside _The Dancing Leaf_ that night.

There were two months to go until the Chuunin exams and her team had made significant progress. In her continuous absence due to the overload of missions she was being sent on lately, Shikamaru had had to shoulder more responsibilities than she had planned for in the beginning of their reluctant mentorship. She knew that she could absolutely not trust Genma on that front, and thus had instructed Shikamaru to lead the team.

Of course, she was still there to steer him around bumps, and she always demanded a detailed update whenever she came back from a mission, but Anko was surprised to see that the kid was finally stepping up to his appointed task, and he was being good at it.

They didn’t call the Nara geniuses for nothing.

However, even though that part of her career was going smoothly against all odds, her time on the active roster was confusing her more and more as time passed.

Predictably, and for some unfathomable reason, the Hokage kept assigning her on missions with Kakashi. By the time she was summoned for their eighth consecutive mission together, Anko's original suspicions were fully confirmed. There was something wrong with Hatake, something that neither he nor the Hokage were willing to disclose, and she was going to find out what it was.

However, as pleasant and chatty as Kakashi was during missions, he was completely elusive when they were in the village. After turning in their reports, she would always invite him for post-mission drinks, and he would always dish out some excuse and disappear. That had always seemed weird to her; drinking after a mission, whether it had been successful or not, was a shinobi tradition older than the Sannin.

And Kakashi had been repeatedly shitting on that tradition.

His behavior was ticking her off. Was he avoiding her on purpose? If she was so repulsive to him, then why didn’t he ask for another partner on all those missions? Why did he bother to make small talk and return her comments? Why did he pretend to enjoy their banter?

True to his elusive and inconspicuous nature, Kakashi remained a mystery she could not decipher and it was driving her insane.

She didn’t know why she cared so much. Anko wasn’t one to usually dwell on other people’s behavior and whatnot. If she got along with them, fine; if she didn’t—well, it might mean trouble for the other party.

But the thing was, she _did_ get along with Kakashi—on missions, that is. Which is why she couldn’t explain why he was avoiding her when they were in the village.

She was still mulling over those questions when her eyes fell on a very familiar silver-haired head belonging to a certain Copy Ninja, seated in a corner table, drinking by himself. Anko smirked and made her way over to his table.

There was no way he would turn her down this time.

* * *

 

"Hatake Kakashi," Anko chanted as she rounded his chair, taking a seat across from him at the small table.

"Mitarashi Anko," Kakashi recited back to her, eyeing her lazily. He had sensed her chakra signature the moment she had entered the bar, and he knew it was only a matter of moments until she spotted him.

"Haven't seen you around these parts before. Word on the street is that you prefer those civilian bars."

He shrugged. "I'm hardly a regular in either."

“Well, then. Seems like it’s your lucky day. You get to get drunk with one of Konoha’s finest.”

Kakashi opened his mouth, an excuse for having to leave resting on the tip of his tongue, but Anko raised a hand to stop him, a very determined look in her eyes. "I'm not taking no for an answer, Hatake."

He watched her for a short moment, before surprising both himself and her by tipping his glass to her and saying, “Do your worst, then.”

Anko grinned and went over to the bar to get drinks for both of them. He watched with mild interest as she moved with a newfound gait in her stride. Kakashi wasn’t one for appeasing people, but if he had known that having a drink with him was so important to her, he would have indulged her a lot earlier.

Truth was, he enjoyed Anko’s company very much. Her easygoing and babbly personality made for a nice camaraderie between the two of them, and he admitted that she was a very interesting person. However, Anko also had no regard for personal boundaries. She was as nosy as they came, which was honestly the only reason Kakashi had been avoiding her. He didn’t need any more people prying into his life and asking questions.

But he was in a bad mood that night. It had been one of those days when everything irked him. He had woken up on the wrong side of the bed, the pups were unusually uneasy, he had burned his dinner and pulled a muscle on his thigh while training; all he wanted was a drink to numb his brain so that he could enjoy his sleep. And he knew from experience that Anko’s presence lifted his spirits, so why the hell not.

She set a drink in front of him and sat down across from him once again, grinning all the while.

“Something amusing?” he asked and she shook her head.

“I’m just surprised you’re still here is all.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Anko gave him a pointed look. “You say that as if you aren’t the most elusive person in the village. I was half-expecting to find a scarecrow in your seat when I came back.”

Kakashi shrugged and she shook her head as if signaling that she wasn’t going to bother. A moment later, she leaned forward on the table towards him.

"So, I have a question for you," she said carefully.

Kakashi leaned back a bit. He didn't like questions, especially when they were personal, which he supposed was exactly where Anko would aim at.

"What's the deal with you and Gai?" she asked, and Kakashi almost let out a breath in relief. He was expecting her to ask about the missions they were being given together, about his team, about his mask—about everything but his and Gai's rivalry actually.

It seemed that she had once again managed to surprise him.

“It’s just some friendly rivalry between comrades,” he replied easily.

“Friendly rivalry,” Anko repeated. “I’m not sure that cuts it, Kakashi. The entire village can testify that your challenges are _insane_.”

“Well, we might go a bit overboard sometimes…”

“A _bit_. Last I heard you two were climbing the Hokage Mountain on one hand while juggling oranges with the other.”

“Gai is a very expressive person.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s all Gai,” Anko mocked, downing the rest of her drink, earning an impressed look from him.

Kakashi chuckled and took the opportunity to take a long sip of his drink when Anko looked out of the window for a moment.

“Oh, _come_ _on_ ,” she whined when she looked back at him to find his mask in place but his drink half-downed.

“What?”

“How can you even _do_ that! What kind of reflexes do you have?”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Kakashi feigned ignorance.

“Your mask, genius,” Anko snorted.

“What about it?” he asked, knowing that stalling would only irk her further. But truth be told, he had had this particular conversation so many times in his life that he was absolutely tired of it by now.

He appreciated Anko’s curiosity, but he didn’t particularly want to entertain it. She had already tried to peek under his mask a handful of times during their missions. He was actually surprised it had taken so long for her to actually address him about it.

"Do you sleep with that even in your own place?" she countered, resting her chin on her propped fist and staring at him intensely.

Kakashi sighed. "Yes, Anko."

"So you never take it off?"

"Well—"

"Do you shower with it?"

"I—"

"Do you take it off during _sex_?"

"Anko," he warned.

"Hey, don't blame me. If you want to wear that thing twenty-four-seven, then you best be prepared for those kinds of questions."

He levelled her with his stare. "People say that curiosity killed the cat."

"Well, yeah," Anko said, a grin spreading across her face. "But satisfaction brought it back."

Kakashi shook his head and twirled his drink in his hands. "Masks aren't that uncommon in the shinobi world, Anko. Why are you so fixated on mine?"

"Well, I don't see anyone else around here walking around wearing a mask their entire lives, for one."

"Literal mask, metaphorical mask—we all wear one. Some just prefer to keep more than one handy."

Anko regarded him for a moment, before crossing her arms over her chest. "Fine, I'll bite. Why?"

"Do I need to explain the utility of stealth to you?" Kakashi said, hoping it would put an end to that conversation.

"Okay, I'll give you that. We all wear masks, one way or another. But at some point, we have to take them off. And the longer you wear it, more of your own skin will come off as well when you remove it."

She grinned. "And I'd hate for your pretty face to get scars, Kakashi."

As if he didn’t have enough of those already, both on his face and elsewhere.

However, Kakashi didn’t dignify that with a response and chose to change the subject instead. “How are the Chuunin exams coming along?”

Anko’s grin seemed to turn upside down. “Turns out I’m not as irreplaceable as I thought.”

“Why is that?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Well, given that I’ve been mostly out of the village in the past month, you’d think that the administration would have gone nuts without me there to coordinate everything and keep the idiots in line.”

“But they haven’t?”

“No!” Anko exclaimed. “Somehow everything runs smoothly. They’re not even fighting! The Hokage appointed _Genma_ as my stand-in and everything is okay. How? Just tell me how.”

Kakashi smartly refrained from laughing at her self-inflicted misery. “How about Shikamaru?”

Now Anko looked positively betrayed. “He’s the one holding everything together.”

“What?”

“Apparently, pressure works well on the kid,” she said bitterly, taking a long sip of her drink.

Kakashi eyed her carefully, and he decided at that moment that he had been very wrong in refusing Anko’s company all those times. He had been smart enough not to let the village’s prejudices regarding Anko get to him, but he hadn’t actually taken the time to figure her out.

Anko reminded him strikingly of himself. She was a workaholic, and she was being pulled away from her job, just like him. Her value was being undermined by being replaced by her colleagues, and she didn’t like it one bit. Somehow, he felt that he could relate to that.

“I was under the impression that you weren’t exactly fond of organizing the Chuunin exams.”

Anko sighed and leaned back in her seat. "I know I bitch about my job all the time, but... I don't _really_ hate it. Sure, those dumbasses piss me off all the time, asking about this and that, filing the wrong paperwork and expecting me to fix things. But it's my job. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't like it."

Kakashi gave her a sympathetic look. “In that case, I should apologize for you being forced on all those missions with me.”

“You _could_ say I’m the worst partner you’ve ever had and get me benched,” Anko suggested.

He flinched momentarily at the word _benched,_ but he quickly shook it off.

“But that would be lying.”

“Don’t get sentimental on me, Hatake,” Anko pointed a warning finger at him. “You have pull and I know it.”

“You’re overestimating me, Anko. As I’ve told you before, I’m a mere jounin. I can’t have you pulled off of missions.”

Anko despaired, slumping over the tabletop and groaning in her arms.

“I can, however, buy you another drink in compensation.”

“Bring it _fucking on_.”

* * *

 

It was beyond late when they finally managed to drag themselves from the bar. Anko was well on her way to getting drunk when the bartender had informed them that they were closing. Kakashi had avoided any subsequent argument by footing the bill and clasping his hand around Anko’s elbow to drag her out of the bar.

"I don't believe your apartment is on this side of town," Kakashi noted when she fell in step with him instead of taking off on the opposite direction.

The slight breeze did wonders to clear Anko’s intoxicated mind it seemed, because she didn’t once sway on her feet when he let go of her arm.

"You know where I live? I'm flattered, Hatake," she winked. "I'm taking the long way home. It wouldn't do to let you walk home all by yourself, after all. Lots of scary people roam the streets at night."

Kakashi snorted, but refrained from noting that she was probably one of those people. "I can defend myself just fine against possible offenders, Anko."

"Isn't that a relief?" she said, and kept walking beside him.

Surprisingly, they walked in silence through the empty streets of Konoha, which gave Kakashi the opportunity to consider the evening at length. He truly had been wrong in avoiding Anko this past month. These past few hours in her presence had reawakened that feeling he had had back on their first mission. He was feeling light-headed, drunk on her company, and most importantly, he wasn’t thinking about his problems.

Anko’s constant babbling made it hard for him to focus on anything other than her, and he found that he didn’t mind either way. Her remarks made him laugh, and he enjoyed the way she tried to pull his leg but miserably failed. She had tried a handful of times to see under his mask, but as each of them came up short, she gave up for the day. He had no doubts that she would try again in the future.

Kakashi hadn’t met many people with Anko’s gift over the years. The ability to induce a good mood, to make people forget their troubles and just enjoy the moment. Apart from her, only Naruto and Minato-sensei had possessed that gift to Kakashi’s knowledge, but it had been a long time since it had worked on him. To find that Anko could lift his spirits with just a few well-placed comments was intriguing to say the least. In fact, it seemed that he would finally be getting some proper sleep, and it was all thanks to her.

His thoughts were moving so rapidly that he didn’t realize they had reached his place. He considered offering to walk her to her own apartment, but he was almost certain that she would take offense to his attempt at being a gentleman. Instead, he bade Anko a simple goodnight and walked up to his door.

He heard her footsteps for a few seconds before the shuffling stopped.

"Hey!" Anko called out and Kakashi looked up from his keys to find her standing a few paces down the street under the lamp post, illuminated against the overall darkness of the street.

"Yes?" he indulged her, partly because he knew that ignoring her would only fan her flame and would result in him getting even less sleep than he was planning.

"I have one last question," she called again, her voice slightly echoing in the otherwise silent street.

Kakashi regarded her closely. All of his interactions with Anko seemed to fit into a prolonged game of undisputed antagonism and dubious rules. He never knew where she would draw the line and call a time-out and he seemed incapable of doing so himself. No doubt he would incur her proverbial wrath if he even dared to try anyway.

So, once again he decided to entertain her demands, simply for the sake of drawing the game to a close for tonight. He really needed to sleep.

"What is it?" he asked, taking a few steps towards her so that they didn't have to yell.

Even under the sharp light of the post that illuminated and distorted her features, Anko's grin was unmistakable.

"Do you and Gai compete over that, too?"

Kakashi followed the direction of her gaze and found himself looking at his crotch.

It was one of the few moments in his life where he had been caught completely unawares. He didn't know how to merit such a question, in a way that he wouldn't disappoint nor give Anko the wrong impression. And the thing was, he didn't _want_ to disappoint her. All this light-heartedness she carried with her was addictive, and for some reason Kakashi wanted to bask in it for as long as he could.

Surprising both himself and Anko for the second time that night, Kakashi smirked and cocked his head to the side, his gaze boring into hers through the dim light.

"Maybe," he said and turned his back to her.

 Anko's resounding laughter followed him until the door was locked behind him.


	16. liminal darkness

Kakashi sighed contentedly as he immersed himself inside the hot water of his bathtub. The temperature of the water was almost scalding, but it was precisely what his sore muscles required at the moment. Four hours of intensive training tended to do that.

Despite all the missions he had been requesting lately, it had still not been enough to quell the panic that was rumbling in his chest and threatened to consume him. Spending a moment idle wasn’t an option, so he had resorted to his first plan: train until you collapse.

No matter if he had come back from an exhausting mission or not, he would always devote four hours to intensive training, whatever that entailed. Knowing his body’s capabilities, that amount of rigorous training would leave him with just enough energy to have a shower and read his book for a while. Or maybe get a drink with Anko.

It was amazing how much that single drinking night had opened up his mind and changed his course of action. He had stopped avoiding Anko. Well, it would be more accurate to say that she had _made_ him stop avoiding her. Despite whining about being extremely busy with the Chuunin exams whenever she was summoned for a mission, it was interesting how often she stumbled upon him supposedly by accident, and invited him to her favorite dango stand or out for a drink.

Based on his previous experiences with saying no to her, Kakashi often found himself indulging her. He did, of course, try to excuse himself first, but it seemed that Anko had quite some trouble accepting no as an answer.

She was fun to hang out with, Kakashi couldn’t deny that. Her constant babbling served as a pleasant distraction from his own thoughts usually. And aside from her not so discreet (or reasonable) questions that made him roll his eyes — like _if you walk around reading porn all the time, shouldn't you have a constant boner_ and _is it true that in ANBU they have orgies all the time_ — he found that the two of them got along nicely.

And if she made it her personal crusade to see under his mask, well, thankfully he had experience in dealing with such inconveniences.

However, Anko had this unnatural power to drain him. He didn’t know if it was the way she kept trying to push his buttons, or her blatant disregard for privacy and personal space, but it was exhausting. He didn’t know how she could handle herself on a daily basis without collapsing from fatigue. He was the one who was trying not to have a single minute a day to think about stuff he didn’t want to, but even his most intense training regimes didn’t tire him our as quickly as Anko’s prying questions.

Kakashi's train of thought was suddenly interrupted when he felt a chakra signature inside his apartment.

His eyes narrowed. How did they manage to bypass his traps? In one of his paranoid phases, he had made sure to proof all of his windows and doors. It was almost impossible for anyone to sneak inside his apartment without triggering at least one of them. He cursed inwardly at himself for sending the ninken away that evening—if nothing else, they would have been the first line of defense in case of an attempt on his life.

He focused on the chakra signature and almost groaned when he recognized it. He really should have known. No one else would be as bold as to sneak into Kakashi Hatake’s home. He pulled the mask that was resting on the floor next to the tub over his face hastily, but he didn't have time to reach for his towel, because Anko stepped inside his bathroom, playing with an apple and looking as if she owned the place.

Her gaze landed on him, strategically submerged in the bubbly tub that thankfully covered all parts of him from the neck down, and she grinned.

"Why, I didn't peg you for the type to take bubble baths, Kakashi," she said, tapping down the toilet seat and sitting down on it, crossing her legs in the process.

"I live to impress," Kakashi said with a level voice, as if she hadn't just broken into his house and was sitting a few feet across from him while he was in the bathtub naked like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"Well, you certainly do," Anko said casually and took a bite of the apple — which she had probably pilfered from his kitchen table.

They sat in silence for a few moments, with Anko chewing on her apple and looking around his bathroom with the utmost interest.

"What are you doing in my house, Anko?" he asked carefully. In the past few weeks of shared downtime, Kakashi had gathered that Anko was much like a tiger. She liked to feel superior and in control, and could positively smell fear. He would have to tread cautiously as to avoid any unwanted backlash.

"Oh, right," she said, sitting up a little. Then a smirk appeared on her lips. "You have three guesses."

Kakashi rolled his eye. _Really now._ "I'm not up for games, Anko."

He realized belatedly the double meaning of his choice of words. His face flushed in mortification when Anko raised an amused eyebrow and cocked her head to the side. He had never been more glad for using so much soap for his baths; the only thing that made him feel secure at that moment was the fact that the foam was so thick that there was no way Anko could see anything past it.

Not that he would put it past her to blow it away; especially if it meant exposing even an inch of his otherwise perfectly covered body.

"Yes, I can tell," Anko teased, because he _knew_ she couldn't. "You're no fun, Kakashi. Bathing with your mask on? Tch, tch."

"It comes in handy when I have unannounced guests."

"Judging from all the traps you've set around the place, I'd say you're not used to having guests at all."

"Can you blame me?" He gestured towards her with a nod. "They always seem to show up at the worst time."

"How was I supposed to know that you like to soak? I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes for you to come out. And your Icha Icha Paradise isn’t as interesting as you make it out to be.”

How the hell had she managed to hide her chakra from him for twenty minutes? Kakashi wasn’t conceited by any chance, but he was acutely aware of his abilities as a shinobi. He hadn’t been a jounin for nearly twenty years for nothing, after all. So either he was getting rusty or he had severely underestimated her.

"Why did you say you were here, again?"

"I didn't. You're supposed to guess."

Kakashi shut his eye and counted to five. "You wanted to catch me with my mask off."

Anko stuck out her thumb. "Nope—one down. Trust me, Kakashi, when I get to see under that mask, it will be perfectly deliberate on your part."

He decided to ignore the flirty undertone in that sentence. "You need something."

"Come on, that's too vague. _Of course_ I need something," she said with a wink, her eyes straying over the tub and he felt the hairs on his arms rise.

"Anko," he warned. "You show up in my house while I'm having a bath. Excuse me if I'm not in the mood for your little games."

She rolled her eyes dramatically. "God, you're worse than Ibiki. Fine; we have a mission."

He raised an eyebrow in question. It was the first time he hadn't actually requested for one. "Why wasn't I summoned?"

"I went to the Hokage's office to drop off some files for the Chuunin exams and she gave me the mission. I asked her if she wanted to brief both of us, but she said I could let you in on the details myself. We're supposed to leave first thing in the morning, so I thought I'd pop in and let you know. Sorry I ruined your evening."

She stood up and Kakashi sighed. "Look, can you just... wait for me in the kitchen?"

Anko shook her head, a grin playing at her lips. "Sure thing."

Kakashi let out a relieved breath when he heard the familiar click of the door being shut behind her.

He waited a few seconds to make sure she wasn’t going to barge in again before pulling the tap from the tub and stepping out. The floor was freezing in comparison to the temperature his body had acquired inside the hot water. He toweled himself off quickly and removed the damp mask before getting dressed.

Thankfully, he had left a fresh change of clothes on the washing machine, which included a pair of pants and a sweatshirt with an attached mask. The last thing he needed was running into Anko in nothing but a towel. He had no illusions about the row of flirty comments _that_ would bring up.

With one quick glance at the mirror to make sure he looked appropriate, Kakashi left the bathroom and headed for the kitchen. He saw that Anko had made sure to turn on all the lights in his house and he sighed. However, he didn’t find her in either the living room or the kitchen. Mentally groaning, he dragged himself to his bedroom. Unsurprisingly, there she was, looking curiously around her as if she was trying to solve a mystery.

Noticing his arrival, Anko clicked her tongue in disapproval. "Shuriken sheets, shuriken towels, shuriken curtains... could you be any more generic?"

"I'm pretty sure that's not the kitchen, Anko."

She shrugged, leaning against his desk. "Kitchen's boring."

He opted not to remind her that boring didn’t matter as long as polite factored in. He figured she wouldn’t care either way.

Kakashi stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked inside the room, suddenly very aware of the fact that Anko was in his house, and more so in his bedroom. His apartment had always been the one place where he had felt secure. It was where no one would ever disturb him, because everyone knew and respected the fact that he was a very private person.

Everyone but her, it seemed.

"You were a funny looking kid,” she noted, looking at the picture of Team Minato that was displayed above his bed.

He raised an eyebrow. "We were in the Academy together. You're only realizing that now?"

"Well, my memories from back then are still a little fuzzy, thank you very much.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh,” Anko faltered, as if suddenly realizing who she was talking to. Then, she waved a hand dismissively. “Reasons.”

For some reason, Kakashi didn’t feel satisfied with that answer. Anko was always prying into his life, asking questions about this and that, and yet she was closing off the details of her own life without a second thought. It made Kakashi even more curious about what she was hiding. However, before he could prod her further about it, her attention had shifted elsewhere.

“Ha, the Yondaime! I used to have the biggest crush on him when I was a kid, you know.”

“You did?” he asked in amusement. Somehow, he couldn’t quite picture Anko pining for someone. And especially for his former sensei.

“Every girl our age did,” Anko said in a matter of fact. “And, I suppose, most of the older ones, too. I used to sneak into the training grounds all the time to see him train your team. It was insane.”

Kakashi briefly wondered how come he had never been aware of her presence there. Back then, he had been so focused on being a proper shinobi who was always on high alert and never let anything get past his attention. And Anko had successfully done so, apparently, for the sole reason of gawking over his sensei. He almost laughed at the irony.

“What was it like? Training under him?”

“Well—” Kakashi started, but he decided that it was high time he started asking questions, too. “How was training under Orochimaru?”

At that, he saw her expression darken for a second and he almost regretted his decision. “I’m sure you’ve read the reports.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I know you,” Anko said simply and Kakashi snorted.

“You really don’t.”

“I know that you like to stick your nose into other people’s business,” she offered with a smirk.

Kakashi shook his head. “Pot, I am kettle.”

Her smirk turned into a grin, but she dropped the subject. And then he saw her reaching for the photo of Team Seven. Unconsciously, Kakashi felt his heartbeat starting to quicken and sweat beginning to pool on his back. What the hell was he doing, letting her roam his apartment like she owned it? He didn’t even allow Gai such liberties, and he had been friends with the man since they were genin.

He could feel her studying him from the corner of her eye and it was making him nervous.

"That’s your team, right?"

Kakashi’s eye remained on her. “Yeah.”

“Do you miss them?"

Startled by the question, more so because of the person who voiced it, Kakashi shook his head. Did he? His conversation with Asuma a few weeks earlier had made him realize that he wasn’t as indifferent to them as he might have liked to think. Even though his team wasn’t nearly as bound-together as the rest of the genin teams, they had been a constant in his life, however fleeting the team’s lifespan had been. They had given him a reason to get up in the morning and to get through the day.

Of course he missed them. He missed their whining and their slumped forms after a day of D-rank missions. He missed the way the boys bickered all the time and how Sakura would always take Sasuke’s side, no matter if he was right or wrong. He missed Naruto’s pleading eyes when he begged him to make a stop at Ichiraku before reporting to the Hokage about their latest mission.

He missed training Sasuke and passing on his knowledge about the Uchiha legacy that Obito had gifted him with. He missed looking at Naruto and seeing a much older man’s face who had always been like a second father to him and a red-haired woman’s smile that could warm your heart even when you felt like it was enclosed by ice. He missed Sakura’s caring nature and how she would always fuss over her boys when they were being reckless in their training.

He missed _everything_.

"I wasn't with them for long," he said finally, although he knew that wasn't an answer and it would probably ensue more questions that he really didn’t want to answer.

However, much to his surprise, Anko didn’t ask anything else. She placed the photo back on the desk carefully and walked up to him. They were standing almost toe to toe when she spoke.

“It’s okay to miss them.”

She was in his personal space and he was certain that she was well aware of it. However, Kakashi was too stunned by the sudden turn of this unexpected visit that it didn’t even occur to him to step back. His gaze was drawn to Anko’s eyes — big brown eyes that were staring up at him, with the same expression she had been wearing when she had been inspecting his room. As if he was a mystery she had to observe closely before attempting to solve it.

But there was something else there, too. Something genuine and curious that he couldn’t place. Kakashi had never really been a people’s person — reading people (and especially women) wasn’t a skill he had acquired successfully over the years. He always seemed to get to the wrong conclusion, so he didn’t really bother. But Anko’s behavior — for some reason it made him long for that skill.

He was surprised to realize that he wasn’t actually mad by this intrusion of his privacy. He wasn’t mad that Anko was asking questions he didn’t dare to ask himself. He wasn’t mad that she was poking at a very dangerous sleeping beast. He was only scared that he wouldn’t know how to deal with it if she woke it up.

Deciding that this impromptu visit was making him think too much about everything, Kakashi cleared his throat, thus bursting the bubble that had formed around them.

“The mission, Anko.”

“Oh, right,” Anko said, blinking slowly as if she was coming out of a trance. “Well…”


	17. partners in crime

"You have nice forearms," Anko commented offhandedly as she chewed on her dango. They were having lunch in a small dango shop in Tanzaku town.

Kakashi resisted the urge to tug at his sleeves as he kept his attention to the street. Comments like this weren’t unusual of Anko, but he couldn’t help feel uncomfortable every time they came up.

"That's a strange compliment."

She shrugged. "It's the only thing I can _see_."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I hope you won't start complimenting my toes next."

"Nah," she dismissed him. "Feet are gross. Why would I be looking at your toes anyway?"

"I don't know, Anko. You tell me."

"I just did. I wouldn't."

 _You shouldn't be looking at my forearms either_ , he thought. _But here we are._

"Do you see anything?" she asked, her eyes trying to follow whatever he had been tracking for the past half hour.

Kakashi shifted in his seat and finally looked at her. "The target has been having dinner across the street for the past ten minutes."

"What?" Anko sputtered, choking on her dango. "And you're telling me now?"

"What difference would it have made?"

"Well, next time I won't knock before entering the bathroom. What difference will _that_ make?"

He looked at her pointedly, as if to remind her that it wasn’t even twenty-four hours ago that she had broken into his apartment and practically stalked him in his bathroom. Judging from her defiant stare, he suspected that she didn’t quite catch that message.

"I was merely trying to avoid an exaggerated reaction; which you provided nevertheless."

"Are you implying that I'm not controlled enough for information gathering?"

"No, I—" He tried to amend, but Anko didn't seem to be listening anyway.

"Cause I'll have you know that my track record on kunoichi missions is impeccable."

Kunoichi missions was a euphemism for intelligence gathering missions that relied on seduction. They were called kunoichi missions because it was rarely men who were assigned to them. Kakashi himself had only been on one of them over the course of his career, and it hadn't been an experience he held dear. He admired kunoichi for being able to carry them out on a regular basis.

He had no conflicts about killing a man in cold blood or torturing someone to get the information he needed, but for all his intelligence, mind games had never been his forte. Which was one of the reasons why he was feeling so strange about all those games Anko was playing.

Kakashi laced his fingers on the table. "I don't doubt that."

"Good," she all but growled. Clearly, she didn't like being doubted. He couldn't blame her.

"So what's the plan?"

His eyes trailed briefly to the barbeque shop down the street before turning back to Anko. "Our intel says that she will attend the local lord's gathering tonight. I doubt that she will be taking the poisons with her, but we need to have eyes on her at all times.”

He tilted his head to the side. “How do you feel about breaking and entering?"

There was a gleam in Anko’s eyes. "One of my favorite pastimes."

"I could tell," he deadpanned. "Well, then. I'll attend the party and keep an eye on her. You sneak into her room and get what we need."

"What if she keeps some handy in her person? Are you gonna frisk her?"

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "I like to think I have more finesse than that."

"The kunai's in your hand," Anko said condescendingly. "I can trade places, if you want. I suspect big crowds intimidate you."

"Really," he said with a raised eyebrow. "How did you get to that conclusion?"

"Like I said, my information gathering record is impeccable.”

"Admirable," Kakashi mock-praised her. "We stick to the plan."

"Whatever floats your boat," she said and popped the rest of the dango in her mouth.

* * *

 

Kakashi hated formal gatherings. No, that was actually an understatement. He _abhorred_ them.

Having been raised as a shinobi, someone who operates in the shadows, away from the spotlight, it was understandable that public events like this one left him uncomfortable. He hated being forced to sit through endless pointless conversations with bland people who had nothing to offer and usually irked him beyond belief. He hated having to dress up and act all noble.

Tonight, he was wearing a dark blue formal yukata with a silver pattern. His mask was ever-present, but he had forgone his forehead protector for the sake of stealth and had replaced it with an eyepatch. His weapons pouch was attached to his hip underneath the formal garment, and it was only its familiar weight that offered him security at this point.

His alias of the night was Hiroki Watanabe, an aspiring merchant from the Land of Rivers, who had a penchant for art and was very chatty — the exact opposite of Kakashi himself.

His objective was to approach their target — Takara Fujimoto — and to keep her pleasantly occupied during the night, while Anko sneaked inside her room and retrieved the missing poisons that Fujimoto had gracefully managed to sneak all across the Land of Fire. Luckily, the woman seemed to be easily swayed by his advances, which had led to them chatting away for most of the night.

Unfortunately for Kakashi, however, she was also very grabby.

He had been keeping her at bay for most of the evening, allowing her to link her arm with his and brush up against him, but successfully avoiding any blunter moves on her part. However, as the night progressed and the sake flowed freely among the guests, she only seemed to be getting bolder.

Kakashi was mentally calculating for how much longer he would have to attend this awful gathering, when he spotted a familiar head among the crowd. He was certain that his eye must have been playing a trick on him, because this was definitely _not_ part of the plan.

As Anko discreetly made her way towards him, he began to list the ways their mission had gone wrong. He was barely scratching the surface when a well-timed grope from the lady next to him made him direct his attention to her once again.

However, he didn’t have to keep up his charade for much longer, because less than a minute later, he felt someone latch onto his other arm and a familiar voice ring in his ears.

“Here you are, honey!” she said sweetly, sporting her brightest smile — one that anyone who knew her could tell from a thousand miles away that it was fake.

“So you finally found me,” Kakashi said, buying in her act and letting his hand rest on the small of her back, while simultaneously itching away from the groping lady.

“You know how bad my sense of orientation is and this place is _huge_. I got lost on my way to the bathroom!” Anko said dramatically, leaning further into him. Then, as if suddenly noticing his company, she added, “Who is your friend?”

“Oh, right. This is Lady Takara,” Kakashi said, gesturing to the lady standing on his other side, who seemed positively irritated at Anko’s intrusion. “Takara-san, this is my wife.”

The two women nodded at each other dutifully, before Anko pouted at him. “Do you think we can go? These gatherings exhaust me.”

“Very well, dear,” Kakashi said, before turning to his previous companion and giving a small bow. “I wish you a lovely evening, ma’am.”

With that, he guided Anko through the crowd. He could feel her muffled laughter reverberating through the hand he kept on the small of her back, and he gritted his teeth. After all, it wouldn’t do much for their cover if he suddenly pushed her into the koi pond.

* * *

 

"Home sweet home," Anko exclaimed in relief as she collapsed on her bed the moment they were back in their shared room at the inn. "Finally one mission with proper accommodation. I was starting to think the Hokage was doing it on purpose."

Kakashi looked at her splayed form and smiled under his mask. “I take it your part of the plan went smoothly.”

“Well, the two guards she had left behind certainly put a damper on my evening, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.”

He nodded absently, putting up a basic seal on the door before taking a seat on his own bed.

Anko opened one eye to look at him, a sly smile playing on her lips. “Though I guess yours was worse.”

Kakashi barely contained his snort. “Whatever gave you that impression?”

Anko shrugged, her grin bright as the sun, and eased back on the mattress with a contented sigh. It was then that Kakashi chose to examine her attire. She was wearing a blood red yukata with golden trimming and ornamental flowers. Her hair was in its usual up-do, but he noticed that she was using senbon to keep them in place, and there was faint coloring on her cheeks and lips.

He had hardly considered Anko a tomboy — she barely left any room for that, considering her usual choice of wardrobe that accentuated her figure — but for some reason he had never considered her to be an overly womanly woman either. She didn’t possess Kurenai’s posture or mannerisms, but he realized that she didn’t look out of place in her yukata. If nothing else, she looked beautiful.

And that was where Kakashi cut off that trail of thought. Since when was he complimenting Anko’s looks? Sure, he wasn’t dense enough to ignore her shapely figure, but he would never resort to the flirty remarks that Anko was so fond of. And why was he even thinking about that? Anko was his comrade, and was proving to be a good friend as well, so any thoughts that strayed from that frame were highly inappropriate. He could ignore Anko’s flirty comments because he knew that she was merely teasing him, but when he allowed his own thoughts to stray in that direction, things were bound to go south.

He was snapped out of his thoughts when Anko groaned. “Man, I’m beat.”

"Was tonight too strenuous for you?" he asked amusedly and Anko rolled her eyes at him, because they both knew that this mission had been a piece of cake.

"It's not about tonight. I just can't wait for the exams to pass so I can work without someone breathing down my neck all the time. I can't do anything without feeling guilty about not working. It’s not like I choose to go on all those missions, and yet the Hokage still expects everything to run smoothly with the exams."

Kakashi felt a pang of guilt at that. He knew that the only reason she was being whooped into so many missions in so little time was because the Hokage thought he couldn’t be allowed on missions unsupervised. "What about after the exams? What are your plans?"

"Drinking, sleeping,” Anko offered, before winking. “Having sex, training until I collapse — I'm not picky."

She sat up on the bed and rolled her head until a satisfying _pop_ was heard. "Who knows, maybe I'll even ask for a long term mission. Just to get out of the village for a while." She looked at him. "What about you?"

Kakashi shrugged nonchalantly. "My plans are not restricted by the Chuunin exams."

"I know, but like, what's your long term plan? Are you going to keep up with those lame-ass missions? Are you going to keep teaching?"

"No,” he said, a bit too sharply, and immediately regretted it. “Passing one team was enough for me."

"Too much responsibility for you?"

"Something like that."

"Then what?" Anko prodded further.

"I don't know. What I've always done, I suppose. Serve the village."

"Sounds dull. _And_ lonely. Don't you ever have fun?"

"Occasionally," Kakashi said, although he suspected that his version of fun was slightly different from Anko’s.

"Would it kill you to join us in jounin poker nights or in the jounin drinking parties?” Anko asked with a serious tone. “Every time it's someone else making jabs about how you blew us off this month. Is it really that hard for you to be around people?"

He sighed, taking off the eyepatch and twirling it in his hands idly. "It's not... _hard_. I just never got used to it. It's a matter of preference. I like my privacy and my solitude. And I'm usually not too fond of sacrificing them for social gatherings."

“Doesn’t it get boring? I mean, I’ve been to your place, and it’s not exactly fun-friendly.”

“I think our definition of fun might differ,” Kakashi pointed out, making her grin wickedly.

“I bet I could teach you a thing or two.”

“Duly noted,” he said as he took out a pair of sweats and a shirt from his backpack. "Is this arrangement alright with you?"

"What do you mean?" Anko said with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, we could afford two rooms if you—"

"Why, are you planning on making a move on me while I sleep, Hatake?"

He rolled his eyes. "I've been told I snore."

She waved a hand in dismissal. "I've shared quarters with Genma. I doubt you can measure up."

Before Kakashi could blink, she had jumped to her feet. "I call first shower."

He waved her off. "Be my guest."


	18. flat out and bluesome

It had been a year to the day since the Sound/Suna invasion of Konoha and the ultimate demise of the Sandaime at the hands of Orochimaru. Usually such events merited respect to the dead and appreciation of their fall to protect the living. In Konoha, in addition to that, it meant celebrations and fireworks, boring speeches and unnecessary grandeur. But the Land of Fire had always been more flamboyant than the rest of the shinobi nations, and since the tradition went back to the earlier days of the village's founding, it didn't seem like it would stop anytime soon.

The village had been preparing for the Day of the Third, as it had come to be referred to, for the entire past week. By the time Kakashi had come back from his mission in Tanzaku town, decorations had been put up all over the village, and even pamphlets were circulating, concerning the events that would occur on the big day.

On his passing through the Academy to deliver his mission report, he had even caught a glimpse of Iruka preparing a short number with the Academy students on the battle between the Sandaime and Orochimaru, complete with costumes and all.

However, Kakashi himself had never been fond of such extravagant receptions of remembrance. He had shown up late to the old man's funeral and he could rarely be seen in the busiest parts of the village during the annual festival for the defeat of the Kyuubi. Death was a recurring element in the life of a shinobi, and he didn't appreciate opportunities to think about it any more than he already did. Celebrations of this sort were for people with fewer skeletons in their closet and a certainly brighter outlook on life and on how it's supposed to move forward.

Since the day had been declared non-working holiday, Kakashi had decided to forgo all of the festivities — which included a grand feast in the arena for the whole village, a speech from the current Hokage who also happened to be one of the Sandaime’s former students, a row of short plays honoring the Sandaime's valor and bravery and so on and so forth.

Kakashi had allowed himself to wake up later than usual, which wasn't a feat nowadays, seeing that he was feeling more lethargic than he usually was. He had sulked in his apartment for several hours with his ninken and many cups of tea, before deciding that he should pay his respects to his fallen comrades.

He had mastered the art of hiding in plain sight a very long time ago — a necessary precaution when your eternal rival was Gai — so it wasn't hard to reach the Memorial Stone undetected by any of his comrades. It was surprising that the cemetery wasn't overcrowded when he passed by it, seeing that a lot of people had perished during the invasion last year. There would undoubtedly be a need for those people’s families and friends to pay their respects. But it seemed that those deeds must have been carried out earlier in the day, so as not to disrupt the flow of the festivities. Either that, or said respects would be paid during the great assembly in the arena. Either way, Kakashi was grateful for the solitude.

However, when he reached the Memorial Stone, it wasn't as empty as he had expected it to be. In fact, there was one person standing there in reverent silence, with a spiky ponytail and a short black yukata with a matching obi tied around their waist, a combination that he quickly recognized as funeral clothes. It took him a good fifteen seconds to realize that the person in question was actually Anko.

That knowledge made him stop a few paces behind her, unsure of whether he should intrude in what he knew to be a private moment in someone's life or leave as quietly as he had come. Anko made that decision for him, though, because she shot him a grin over her shoulder and beckoned him closer.

"I had a feeling I would meet you here.”

“I’ve never seen you here before,” Kakashi commented as he came to stand beside her.

“I don’t make a habit out of talking to the dead,” Anko said. “They’re really bad interlocutors.”

Kakashi smiled under his mask. He had first-hand experience on how unproductive conversing with the dead actually was. But they were the only ones who offered him some sort of solace through their silence nowadays and, well, he had never advocated having the healthiest of habits.

"Who are you here for?" he asked with a slight tentativeness. The dead were always a tender subject in a person’s life, and he already had one bad experience with prying into Anko’s life.

When she didn’t lash out at him but pointed to one name wordlessly, Kakashi raised his eyebrows in surprise. The Sandaime.

"I didn't know you were close to him."

"He was the one who helped me get back on my feet when I came back to the village,” she explained casually, one corner of her lips turning upwards. "You can imagine how fucked up I was after two years of practically being a missing nin and the supposed apprentice of Orochimaru, while actually being a glorified experiment."

She shook her head. "Everyone feared me. The council, the villagers, my peers... No one would look at me and not see him. But not the old man. No, he just saw a scared fourteen year old who had no idea what to do with her life."

Kakashi nodded in acknowledgement, partially amazed by how freely she was talking to him about such a delicate subject. While he hadn’t been closely associated with Anko before the Godaime started assigning them on missions together, he had felt that they had become fast friends rather quickly after that. However, their conversations rarely ever got personal. Kakashi was guarded near the point of paranoia, and he figured that Anko was only slightly better at sharing things herself.

It didn’t surprise him that, after months on this shared companionship, he knew so little of Anko's life. It was an intriguing method she followed, putting herself out there without bothering to conceal her feelings, opinions or thoughts, making others assume that she was an open book. But he had quickly realized that the book she so graciously laid open for the whole world to read was in a language unfamiliar to anyone but herself.

Which was why he felt oddly privileged to be graced with a part of her history that he assumed only a few people knew of. Maybe it was because he was no stranger to such behavior himself. He had been merely a child when the first sideways glances had started being directed at him when he walked around the village, sporting the prized dojutsu of the Uchiha clan and a family name dipped in disgrace. By the time he was fourteen, he could scarcely care anymore.

“Shouldn’t you be at the grand ceremony then?”

“So I can gag at all the boring speeches and stupid plays?” Anko replied with a snort, clearly as indignant at the extravagant festivities as he was. "Thanks, but no thanks. I never really thought of him as the Hokage. He was more like a grandpa, or an uncle, to me. And that's how I want to remember him. All these celebrations about his bravery and his glorious last stand to protect the village? Not my thing."

Kakashi mulled over that for a moment, before finally agreeing with her. “They did go all out.”

Anko sighed in pent-up frustration and changed the subject. “What brings _you_ here?”

“Well, this happens to be my favorite meditation spot.”

“I hope I’m not cutting into _your_ conversation time with the dead.”

“Like you said, they are not very good at it.”

They exchanged a smirk and went back to observing the Memorial Stone in silence, paying their respects in private for a while. Kakashi was prepared for the conversation when Anko picked it up again a few moments later — she didn’t seem to be able to handle extended periods of silence — but he was slightly taken aback by the choice of subject.

"How many of those do you know?" she asked, gesturing to the Memorial Stone before them.

"More than I'd like to," he admitted sadly. Sometimes it felt like the stone would run out of space before he died.

"Yeah."

"You?"

"Not as many as you, I'm sure," Anko said. She pointed at two names that were listed side by side in the lower part of the stone. "My parents."

Kakashi scanned the names quickly. In all the years he had been coming here to pay his respects to his dead, he had never once paid attention to the rest of the names carved alongside them.

"They died when I was six — mission gone wrong,” she explained, her voice neutral. “Guess it didn't occur to them not to take missions together, in case something like that happened."

It wasn’t surprising, really. Most of the shinobi of their generation had been orphaned early in their childhood.

Her fingertips moved to a much newer name.

"Hayate," Kakashi read out loud. He hadn't known the man personally, but he had shared half a lifetime in ANBU with Yugao, and he knew how badly the sickly jounin's death was affecting her still. He didn’t have much insight into Yugao’s love life, but he knew that their feelings for each other had run deep.

"I didn't really know him before he was assigned proctor on the last exams. He was a last minute addition, if you believe that. Talk about bad luck, that guy." She shook her head, smiling. "He didn't talk that much but, damn, he could tell a joke. Made Ibiki crack a smirk once."

Kakashi cracked an amused smile at that. It required immense skill to make the stoic jounin break face even for a moment. He knew because during his psych evals while he was in ANBU, he used to employ every skill in his arsenal of annoying quirks in order to make Ibiki crack.

Alas, he had always come up short. The man simply wouldn't bulge.

"Obito Uchiha," she read out the next name, catching his attention again. "What a dumbass."

Kakashi was startled — no one ever referred to Obito that way anymore. Be it out of respect to the deceased boy or to Kakashi himself, no one joked around the subject. They either thought that it was incredibly rude — Obito had died a death befitting of a shinobi, sacrificing his life to save a comrade, which was nothing to laugh about — or they believed that Kakashi would go ballistic if anyone so much as hinted at Obito’s trademark idiocy. Yet it seemed fitting that Anko would be the one to break that tradition. Ultimately, he chuckled.

"He used to avoid me like the plague, you know. Always turning white as a sheet whenever our paths crossed."

"He was quite scared of you," Kakashi pointed out and it was true. He could vividly recall many instances where Obito babbled about the crazy snake girl that grinned like she wanted his blood.

"I know. Freaking him out was my favorite hobby. It was so easy to rile him up, I just couldn’t pass up a chance to do so. I was bummed when I heard he fell in the line of duty."

She looked up at him and he was surprised to see that there was no pity in them. He was used to people being sympathetic towards him on the matter of his fallen teammates, almost to the point where it got ridiculous, but Anko was being indifferent as ever, talking about it as if she was talking about the weather. That was one of the things he had come to appreciate about her. She never made a big deal out of anything.

"Must have been hard for you. What with being teammates and all."

"We never really saw eye to eye," he said, recognizing the irony in his words. He had never grasped Obito's viewpoint, and yet he had been gifted with his Sharingan. "But losing him took its toll on our team."

"I always thought that he was too good for this line of work. Should have just stayed a civilian. Would have at least been alive now."

Kakashi nodded, despite knowing that such had never even been a possibility for Obito. Being born into the Uchiha clan meant being born a shinobi as well, even for black sheep. He had more chances of coming back from the dead than he had of being a civilian.

"Before we know it, it will be our names being carved here," Anko mused out loud.

“Probably,” he agreed. He had no illusions about his life. Just like countless shinobi before him, he would go down fighting, protecting his village and his comrades. Lying on his deathbed at eighty years old, surrounded by children and grandchildren, and leaving this world with the knowledge that he had lived a full life was naught but wishful thinking. And, to his mind, almost utopic.

Anko smirked up at him. "But who knows for sure? Maybe you'll retire and become a farmer before an enemy gets the chance to kill you."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "And perhaps you will retire and have half a dozen kids."

Anko seemed disgusted at the mere allusion. "I'd rather fall on my kunai."

Kakashi chuckled at her choice of words and let his gaze roam around the training fields. The sun was beginning to set and soon the festivities would begin. It was probably a good time to be heading back to his apartment, to drink and probably sulk some more. The day all but demanded it, after all.

However, he wasn’t feeling up to drinking alone today. And since his recently established drinking buddy was standing a few feet to his right, he figured it was fate.

“Since you’re so averse to joining in the celebrations, how about drinks at my place?”

“Why, Kakashi, I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

 

A couple of drinks quickly evolved into a lot more. Before they knew it, midnight had come and they had moved the party to the roof of Kakashi’s building. The moon was merely a sliver on the dark sky, but the streets were alight, burning golden in the night. They would soon be releasing floating lanterns into the sky; a reminder that the Will of Fire would keep burning bright in the village for generations to come.

They had been drinking for the past few hours, so much that Kakashi had lost count of how many sake bottles they had consumed. He could only be certain that his liquor cupboard would need to be restocked soon. His head was buzzing, but he had filtered most of the alcohol from his system using chakra — a trick he had acquired from Jiraiya many years. It wouldn’t do much to trip over his own feet and fall of the roof, after all. Or, even worse, have Anko save him if that happened.

Speaking of whom, Anko seemed to be faring a lot better than he was. He knew that she could hold her liquor — he had assumed as much from all those times they had been drinking together and she simply failed to get wasted — but he didn’t think that she could handle drinking as much as he did (or even more) and still seem perfectly fine. Kakashi was not a bulky man, but he was tall and muscular, whereas Anko was average in height and leaning on the thin side. It didn’t make any sense for her to be so resistant to alcohol.

But then again, a lot of things about Anko didn’t make much sense to him.

Ever since the beginning of their reluctant partnership, Anko had seemed drawn to him, seeking him out outside of missions, pestering him about having drinks with her, inviting him to lunch. She flirted mercilessly and teased abundantly, but it was all in good spirit, offered so eagerly, as if they were old friends who had shared a lifetime in each other’s company. She was warm and inviting and everything Kakashi had never associated himself with and he just couldn’t figure her out.

"I have a question for you," Kakashi said in a serious tone, immediately regretting his course of action, but all this overthinking was killing him and he just _had to know._ "Why are you doing this?"

Anko raised a curious eyebrow at him. "This?"

He made a vague gesture in the darkness. "Coming after me, trying to be my friend, spending time with me outside of missions."

"And here I was thinking that _you_ couldn't get enough of me," she teased, grinning slyly.

"Humor me, Anko."

Her grin disappeared, and a thoughtful expression took its place. She twirled the bottle of sake in her hands absently. "I guess it's because I don't understand you."

Kakashi looked at her openly, his curiosity piqued.

"I have worked in T&I for over a decade. I’ve learned from the best. I know all there is to know about the workings of the human mind and how to break through its walls. I can read people from scratch, understand their intentions and determine their actions.” She pursed her lips. “But not you. I don't understand how you think, why you do the things you do, what goes on in your mind when we're talking and... well, I guess I've always liked a challenge.”

"Is that what I am, then? A mind-reading project?" he joked, because he had not been ready for such sincerity. Anko scowled, not appreciating the joke.

"Of course not. I want to figure you out, but that doesn't mean that's all there is to it. In these few months, you've become a friend and even though I don't understand you most of the time, I like you."

"Well... thank you," Kakashi said sincerely, and he was glad for his mask at that moment, because he was certain that her honest words had made a blush form on his face.

He was suddenly aware of the fact that his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms, and he didn't know if that had anything to do with her prior comment of appreciation towards them, but for some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

"No need to," Anko countered, her eyes tracking scanning the village. "Can I ask _you_ something?"

He shrugged. "It's only fair."

"What are you running from?"

Kakashi jerked slightly, but tilted his head curiously at her, walking the reaction off as if it never occurred. "I'm not running from anything."

"You have to. We're shinobi, we all run from something in our lives."

"Is that so," he said casually. "What do _you_ run from?"

Anko smirked. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Aa, is that how it is?"

"Mhm," she said cheekily. "We all run. But the thing is, you can't run forever. And take it from someone who's done a hell of a lot of running away in their lives: it gets old. And it wears you out. And eventually you realize that all the running in the world won't get you nearly as far as you want to be."

Kakashi couldn’t help but wonder exactly how far she had gotten before realizing that.

Because it was true. All shinobi ever did was run. All _Kakashi_ had ever done was run. Run from his past, run from his ghosts, run from his responsibilities, run from everything. He didn’t think he ever stopped. And he didn’t think he ever would. Unfortunately, no one had ever cared to let him now that no matter how far, how fast, and how long you run, your troubles will always catch up to you.

No one had cared to let him know that Hell was something you carried around with you, not somewhere you went.

But Anko? Loud, vivacious, exuberant Anko, who talked loud enough to make the world take notice of her; who challenged the best because she had the nerve for it; who didn’t like being doubted; who was hardworking and earnest and so very cranky when things didn’t go her way — what was she running from? What was chasing after her? What was she trying to forget?

"You say I'm hard to decipher, but you're not any easier yourself," he said finally.

She grinned once again. "I should hope not. I have a reputation to uphold."

Kakashi smiled at that, and they both turned their attention to the lanterns now floating up into the night sky, illuminating the Hokage Mountain and casting an orange glow over Konoha. It was a sight unlike any other, and it brought an unwarranted calmness to Kakashi’s heart. Because Konoha was here, breathing and beaming with life, and he was so, so ungrateful for this gift that many had sacrificed their lives for.

Because Konoha was home and he had been a willing runaway for months.

Anko was absorbed in her own thoughts when he turned to look at her. He didn’t know if it was the general mood of that day, which seemed to bring out a side of him he had always tried to keep hidden from the world, or if the alcohol had somehow found a way to his brain despite his honest efforts to prevent it, but he saw her something in her. Then and there, on the cold tiles of his apartment building, when all of Konoha was caught up in moving forward, he looked at Anko and saw a crack in her carefully built walls, a tiny place for him to squeeze his way in.

"How far did you get?" Kakashi asked, but he didn’t know if he was ready for the answer.

Slowly, Anko turned to him, a smile on her lips, but he saw her eyes shining in the light, filled with tears that she wouldn't shed. He saw her eyes, and somewhere in there he thought he saw her own Hell, too.

"Here."


	19. never quite free

Kakashi was a big fan of silence. He liked the comfortable pauses in conversations where neither party felt obliged to break the quiet. He enjoyed quiet evenings in his home with his dogs and his books. He avoided social events and gatherings specifically because they disturbed his much appreciated peace and quiet.

However, silence wasn’t always comfortable or calming. Like when he was overthinking things that were better left unthought-of as a whole—or when a conversational silence left him thinking that he had done something wrong and awkwardness began to seep in the space between him and the other person. In those cases, the silence only seemed to irk him further and make his fingers twitch in nervousness.

Case in point, the current predicament.

The Hokage had summoned him and Anko the previous morning to assign them yet another mission. During his latest travels, Jiraiya had acquired some information through his spy network about a possible hideout of Orochimaru, and the Hokage had decided to send out a team to investigate further. Kakashi wasn’t surprised, since he was the go-to person when it came to espionage — he was one of Jiraiya’s contacts regarding what was happening in the village, after all. And apparently, Anko had an in with the Hokage that guaranteed her admission on any mission even remotely associated with Orochimaru.

(Kakashi suspected it involved sake.)

He wasn’t surprised by that either. After she had broken into his house and hinted at her apprenticeship under Orochimaru being anything but wonderful, Kakashi had actually snuck into the archives and read Anko’s file. He wasn’t proud to have done so, but Kakashi was nothing if not meticulous when it came to intelligence. He never went into battle without knowing all the details and having a solid plan, and he wasn’t about to embark on his friendship with Anko with anything less. If he had learned anything about women in his twenty nine years, it was that some insight was never harmful.

He had been surprised to read about the horrors Anko had faced under Orochimaru, however. He had known about the mark, of course, but her psychological evaluations from back then, even the physical ones concerning the mark, were almost gruesome. It had been unsettling to read what had been going on in her mind back then; a scared fourteen year old with only half a memory and a curse branded on her shoulder.

Kakashi had felt as if he was intruding on something very personal, but there was no way he would ever ask Anko directly about her time as Orochimaru’s apprentice. Judging from the way she had put up her walls the moment he had pried a bit further than he was supposed to during their first joint mission, the issue was a very tender one, and Kakashi had no intention of hurting Anko by asking her things he had no reason to stick his nose into.

(When the hell had he gotten so tactful?)

They had reached their destination at the southeastern borders of the Land of Fire after sundown. The journey itself had been uneventful and mostly quiet; Kakashi could tell that something was up with Anko, and he had no doubts that that something involved Orochimaru’s possible involvement in their mission.

They had set up camp in the thick forest surrounding the cabin-like building they had been instructed to investigate. As the designated leader of the mission, Kakashi had deemed it better to stake out the place for at least six hours before moving on. Anko hadn’t offered anything other than a shrug, even when he volunteered for first watch, which had made Kakashi suspicious, but not enough to actually argue with her.

However, when she slipped out of the tent a little after midnight to take over looking worse for wear, he couldn’t help but worry at her disheveled appearance.

"You're a mess," Kakashi observed casually as she took a seat next to him, eyes droopy and shoulders slumped, as if she had been training in the past few hours instead of resting.

"Not looking so hot yourself, sunshine," she bit back, rubbing a fist over her right eye.

"Rough night?”

"What gave me away? The dark circles?"

"The lack of physical bullying, mostly."

Anko rolled her eyes at him. "I couldn't sleep.”

He waited for an explanation to follow, but he wasn’t so lucky. Anko’s gaze was drawn to the ramshackle building in the distance, looking so innocent in its near dilapidated state, but they both knew better than to allow its appearance fool them. Orochimaru was cunning, and Kakashi expected nothing less of him. They would have to be aware of their surroundings at all times. He trusted Anko to have his back, but he couldn’t help but worry that her mind was not a hundred percent there.

He knew that he would be threading on some very thin ice if he steered the conversation in the direction he wanted to take it, but when it came to keeping his comrades safe and completing the mission without casualties of any kind, he was willing to handle a case of cold shoulder.

“Are you having trouble with the mark?” he asked, and he knew that he had surprised her when she turned towards him in the blink of an eye.

“What?”

“You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet during the trip, and I saw you reach for your shoulder several times,” he explained calmly, stating the facts. “I figured it had something to do with it.”

Kakashi expected a snappy remark — expected her to tell him to bugger off and stop asking questions he had no reason to concern himself with, but instead all he got was a sigh.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Anko said, her hand coming up to massage her left shoulder, and Kakashi couldn’t help but steal a glance at the mark peeking out from underneath her trench coat.

"Sasuke had one of those, too," he said offhandedly, almost too casually — like this wasn’t the first time he had said the boy’s name out loud in months. Like Sasuke wasn’t a subject he had stored away in the back of his head, along with the rest of his regrets. Like it didn’t pain him to even think about his latest of failures.

Anko looked at him out of the corner of her eye, silent in her observation. He continued, "Orochimaru gave it to him during the Chuunin exams."

"I remember," she said curtly, still eyeing him carefully. "I yelled at you for letting him compete. What did you do about it?"

"I sealed it.”

She hummed in approval. "Good choice."

Kakashi hesitated for a moment, unsure whether he should press any further. But he had to know. For some unexplainable reason beyond the simple concern for one’s comrades, he _had_ to know.

"Does it hurt?"

She shrugged, letting her hand fall from her shoulder and rest on her thigh. "Sometimes.”

Sometimes. How often was sometimes? How _tolerable_ was sometimes? Because Kakashi was an avid provider of vague answers, and to his experience, they usually understated the problem beautifully. Like how he _sometimes_ got nightmares, which translated into every other night — or how he sometimes thought that everything that went wrong in his life was not accidental, but related to him and his poor decision-making skills.

(That one occurred every other hour or so.)

"Have you considered sealing it? I could..."

"I'm fine," Anko cut in, the look in her eyes assuring him that she wasn’t going to talk any further about it. "I can handle the pain. It reminds me I survived."

Deciding that he had pestered her enough, Kakashi nodded silently and stood up, heading over to the tent to get some rest and allow Anko some apparently needed time alone. He absent-mindedly brushed a hand to the scar beneath his Sharingan, hidden away behind his hitai-ate.

 _It shouldn’t,_ he thought, in the solitude of the tent, and closed his eye.

* * *

Anko hadn’t had the greatest of expectations when the Hokage had assigned Kakashi and her this mission, but she hadn’t thought it would go wrong in so many ways.

To be fair, the situation had started deteriorating a long time ago. Ever since Orochimaru’s latest visit in Konoha and the Sandaime’s death, her mark had been acting up. It had started out as a dull ache when she was stressed. Then, a pull whenever she trained. Later, a sharp but brief pain in random occasions. In the past week, the pain had become more constant and sharper. She had had trouble sleeping and focusing her attention entirely on something. She was starting to think that it was slowly eating away at her brain.

As if that wasn’t enough to put her on edge, she also had to deal with Kakashi’s curious and worried looks. She wasn’t stupid; she knew he was watching her closely — which only made her angry. Sure, she appreciated his concern, but she could do without it. She had dealt with everything by herself for a long time, and she didn’t like having someone breathing down her neck.

And then, there was that cabin. The bloody hideout of that fucking snake. Deep down, Anko knew that she shouldn’t have been there in the first place. What with the way the mark had been acting up, being anywhere near Orochimaru or anything affiliated with him was bound to end up badly for her. But, of course, she was nothing if not stubborn, and if anyone had dibs on catching that snake and putting a stop to his sick research, that was definitely Mitarashi Anko.

It was a little after sunrise that Kakashi had decided they would finally investigate the building in question. The place had probably been abandoned in a while, but there was still evidence of Orochimaru’s gruesome experiments. Broken phials, scribbled notes, scalpels, poisons. He was everywhere in the small establishment, and Anko’s mark burned because of it.

She could feel Kakashi’s worried gaze in every step she took, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him off or argue with him, because handling the scorching pain in the shoulder was taking up all of her attention. She was still focused on the mark when they finished collecting evidence from the scene and sealed the entrance. And she was still focused on it when they started on the way home.

Anko figured that was where she went wrong. Because if she hadn’t been so focused on appearing like she wasn’t suffering, she wouldn’t have almost been killed.

She would have seen the two rogue shinobi coming. She would have seen the katana aiming straight for her neck. She would have seen through the diversion, would have recognized that she was fighting a clone, and not the original. She would have protected herself.

She would have prevented Kakashi from getting hurt.

But she hadn’t. And now, after the threat was gone and the two rogue shinobi incapacitated, when they were safe and waiting for ANBU backup, she felt more in pain and angrier than ever. At herself, at her good-for-nothing former mentor, at the curse she had been branded with due to her own ignorance and blindness — but mostly at Kakashi.

"Idiot," Anko hissed, securing the binds of the incapacitated shinobi, while simultaneously eyeing their surroundings warily, lest there would be another surprise attack. "I had him. Why did you have to jump in?"

Kakashi was leaning back against the bark of a tree; he flinched slightly as the wound on his torso was pulled open. "He was in your blind spot. If I hadn't stepped in, you would be dead now."

"I don't _have_ a blind spot," she growled.

Kakashi rolled his eyes and zipped open his vest. His shirt was soaked with blood over his abdomen. It seemed that the slash was deeper than they thought. Anko looked at him closely as he tugged his shirt and fishnet undershirt over his stomach to assess the damage.

"Shit. That looks bad, Kakashi," she commented, coming closer. "I'm not a medic, but I can—"

He dismissed her with a wave of his hand. "It's fine. I can stitch myself up."

Anko bit her lip to hold back a snort. "Of course you can."

Kakashi ignored her as he went on stitching himself, but Anko couldn't help throwing a few sideways glances at him every now and then. She told herself it was because she felt responsible for his injury, but she knew that curiosity also factored in. It was the first time she was seeing a piece of Kakashi's skin under all those layers, and she could say that she was damn well impressed.

The cut was on his abs, so she had a full view of his abdomen, stomach, and the dip between his hips. He was muscular, more than she had expected, but not overly so. The V that disappeared inside his pants looked delicious—and Anko had to catch herself right then and there because she did _not_ want to be thinking of Kakashi like that.

She felt her face burn, and she knew that, this time, it didn’t have anything to do with the mark. She was still angry at Kakashi, and she couldn’t get the image of him leaping in front of danger for her, taking a hit meant for her, almost dying _because of her_. She knew that he valued his comrades and would do anything to protect them, but he was an idiot and he shouldn’t have to do that for her, because she was supposed to be better than that.

 _Stupid, infuriating man,_ Anko thought, stealing another glance at him and feeling the knot in her belly loosen a bit when she saw that the wound on his torso had stopped bleeding. She ticked off the seconds in her mind until he cut the thread he had been stitching himself with a lightning-chakra-charged finger and put away the needle.

“That was a stupid move,” she told him, and Kakashi sighed as he tried to find a more comfortable position against the tree.

“Most people would say thank you.”

“For nearly getting yourself killed?”

Kakashi didn’t even blink. “It was a flesh wound. I’m fine.”

“Why did you do it? I was handling it just fine,” Anko argued.

“It didn’t look like it. You weren’t focused, and if I hadn’t intervened, you would have been killed.”

She glared at him. “I was perfectly—”

“Look,” Kakashi cut in. “I don’t want to argue with you. We both know you’ve been on edge during the entire mission. You didn’t see the attack coming, but I did, and I stopped it. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

"No, we can’t. Because you could have gotten seriously injured and it would have been on my conscience."

"And if the attack had found its target, it would have been on mine," Kakashi countered. "Anko, I didn’t do it because I don’t think that you can protect yourself. I did it because that’s what partners do. You have my back and I have yours."

Anko was staggered by the sincerity in his words, so much that she felt all of her anger wash away. There was nothing derogatory or patronizing in Kakashi’s tone. He meant what he said — he considered them partners.

The word tasted foreign on her tongue. Not bad, just strange.

Anko regarded him closely for a moment, debating whether to continue with this argument that somehow seemed pointless right now, or to accept that this relationship between her and Kakashi was less of a forced partnership, and more of an actual friendship. It was strange, and it unnerved her more than it should, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. For some odd reason, it felt… comforting.

"Partners, huh?” she said finally, and a smile found its way on her lips. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“But you have to let me buy you dinner."

Kakashi chuckled at that, and she felt her stomach tighten. “We have a deal.”


	20. killers and saviors

The first thing Kakashi registered when he felt himself drifting out of sleep and into consciousness, was a wet snout nudging his hand. Which should have been a normal occurrence for a person who had spent the better part of his life surrounded by dogs, except Kakashi’s ninken rarely ever acted like regular dogs.

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking heavily as he tried to regain full consciousness. Turning his head, he saw Uhei now poking with his paw at his left hand as it hung over the side of the bed.

Kakashi tried to raise an eyebrow in question, but his muddy brain wasn’t cooperating with his body. He made a questioning gesture with his hand that he hoped would get the point across. Uhei was about to answer when a very insistent and rapid knock echoed in the apartment. The ninken made a gesture that resembled a shrug before leaving the bedroom.

Kakashi groaned as he pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes to brush away the remnants of sleep. Since his last mission, an odd wave of lethargy had overcome him. While he used to barely be able to get four straight hours of sleep, now he scored fourteen hours without even realizing it. The only thing he seemed to be doing lately was sleeping.

Drowsily, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and got to his feet. "I'm coming, I'm coming," he called out loud, stumbling through his living room to get to the door.

Having a visitor at this time at night wasn’t exactly a regular occurrence for Kakashi. In fact, he rarely got visitors at all. Only one person came to mind, and Kakashi groaned mentally, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be Gai on the other side of the door at this time of night.

He wasn’t prepared to find his designated partner there.

"Anko?"

She was gripping the doorframe like a lifeline with her left hand, while her right hand was clenched around the cursed mark like a vice.

"It hurts," she said through gritted teeth, her voice barely sounding like her own. "Hurts, hurts, hurts—"

His shinobi instincts kicking in, Kakashi moved forward and let her fall against him, her forehead knocking against his shoulder. He pulled her into the apartment, supporting her weight with his body and kicking the door shut behind him. Anko’s hand, the one not cupped over her mark, snaked its way behind his back, fisting on his shirt so tightly that it was making the material stretch over his chest.

Kakashi led her to the couch. She didn't let go of him when he tried to make her sit down, so he was forced to sit with her. One of his hands came up to rub soothing circles on her back.

"Calm down. It will hurt a lot more if you're tense," he instructed, his voice sounding strong over her haggard breathing.

“I— _can’t,_ ” she hissed, forehead pressing into his shoulder as if she was trying to mash her own brain.

“Yes, you can,” Kakashi said. He maneuvered his hand so that it was now covering the expanse of her ribs. “Breathe in.”

Anko took a deep breath, but she expelled it half a second later to let out a pained groan.

“Come on, Anko. Focus on my breathing. In. And out.”

She tried a few more times, but she couldn’t maintain a steady rhythm. Her pulse was jumping when he pressed two fingers against her throat, and he was certain that it wouldn’t be long before she went into shock. The question was what he could do if worst came to worst.

"Seal it," Anko barked through shaky breaths, forcing herself back to look at him with bloodshot eyes. "I can't take it anymore. Seal it.”

He shouldn’t do it. That was the first thought that came to mind. The last time he had sealed a cursed mark — Sasuke’s cursed mark — it had been inactive. There was no guarantee of safety for a sealing that would take place when the mark was flaring up. He could be putting Anko’s life in danger. However, as he looked at her hollow eyes and took in the sweat that she seemed to be drenched in, Kakashi knew that there wasn’t really a choice to be made there. After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded.

Carefully, he pried Anko’s hand from his shirt and got to his feet. He quickly pushed away the armchair, the coffee table, and the carpet, before grabbing his weapon pouch and taking out ten kunai. He stuck them on various points on the worn out floor, creating two concentric circles, before retrieving a scroll from his bookcase and unfurling it inside them. He pressed his palm on its center and sent a bout of chakra that made the ink characters glow and spread out on the floor in seven different directions. With sharp moves, Kakashi put the scroll away and retrieved a vial of crimson ink, which he emptied into a small bowl.

Mindful of the symbols on the floor, he walked up to Anko, who was still trembling, folded into herself, with her hand still holding onto the mark. He helped her to the center of the circles and eased her down.

"I need to take off your shirt for this," Kakashi said cautiously, voice as neutral as he could make it.

Anko didn’t even have the energy to tease him. "Right now I'm more worried about dying than about you seeing me naked, Kakashi. Just do it."

Kakashi nodded, although she couldn’t see him, and used his lightning chakra to cut through the fabric of her top, tugging the scraps away from her torso. He pried her hand away from the mark with some difficulty, dipped his fore and middle finger into the bowl of ink, and got to work. He started from her left arm, painting the symbols from the cursed mark all the way down to her wrist, before moving clockwise towards her chest. A part of Kakashi that wasn’t entirely occupied with the severity of the situation at hand was really glad that Anko hadn’t forgone her bindings, despite her discomfort. It would have made a certainly awkward situation if he had to draw the symbols on her bare chest.

"It fucking hurts," Anko hissed. "Kakashi, do something."

"I am," he rebuked, painting the symbols on the left side of her torso, right over her heart. He was trying to be as quick as he could, but Kakashi was nothing if not meticulous with his work, and he wouldn't allow himself to make this seal anything sort of perfect.

Her breaths came sharp and short, and her eyes were shut tightly. "Distract me."

Kakashi wanted to snort and tell her that talking would only distract _him_ , but amidst the fuss of recreating the seal properly, a light went off in his head. There was one subject he could talk about without needing to take his head off the game.

"My summons are actually my dogs."

She snorted. "No shit."

"I'm serious. I didn't just sign a contract with them. Pakkun was a gift for my graduation from the Academy. And the rest of them I... well, I kind of adopted them throughout the years."

"So what, you went around, rescuing puppies and turning them into your ninja helpers?"

"To be fair, they were never just _puppies_. They were ninken that someone had cast away. Shiba is actually Inuzuka-bred. I was simply on the lookout for ninken that people didn't want."

"That would explain your relationship with them. I doubt I've seen summons more devoted to their summoners than yours," Anko observed, trying to calm down her breathing.

"Dogs are loyal by default, but how you treat them matters a lot,” Kakashi said, dipping his fingers inside the ink once more, before moving to her back. “Believe it or not, I spent most of my childhood choreographing their attacks."

She choked out an incredulous laugh. "I have trouble imagining you dance."

"I was an odd child."

"I'll bet,” she teased, but her body spasmed again.

“We also go running from time to time.”

"You jog," Anko repeated, opening one eye to look at him in disbelief. " _You_."

Kakashi rolled his eyes at her. "I don't see why you are so surprised. I have to keep in shape somehow, after all."

"I just never figured you for the type to go jogging."

"Really? What type did you figure me for?"

"I don’t know. Just not jogging.”

"Mhm," he said condescendingly, painting the last symbol on her back. He pushed the ink bowl away and leaned into her line of vision. "I'm done. Are you ready?"

Anko nodded, her hands fisting the material of her pants. "Just do it."

"Alright," Kakashi said, standing up. His hands came together, moving fluidly in a sequence he had memorized perfectly the first time he had had to use this technique.

Hare, snake, horse, ram, bird, tiger.

Hare, snake, horse, ram, bird, tiger.

Hare, snake, horse, ram, bird, dog, rat.

His palm fell on Anko's cursed mark and he held his breath.

" _Seal._ "

There was a flash of light that brightened the dim-lighted room, and then pain erupted in Anko's shoulder. She screamed in agony as the symbols he had previously painted on her seemed to come to life, dancing on her skin as they marched in line towards her mark. Kakashi's hand was steady in its grip, not letting her move. However, her body seemed to be in so much pain, her muscles spasming so hard, that she couldn't move away even if she wanted to.

Kakashi withstood his desire to pull away valiantly. Anko's screams were piercing his ears, reminding him too much of Rin's shrieks of pain when his Chidori had run through her chest. He forced those thoughts away and focused instead on the sealing taking place before him. The symbols were moving quickly, which meant that the procedure was going smoothly. He waited patiently for the last of them to find their way to Anko's shoulder; a wave of warmth erupted under his palm and he moved away. Around the three tomoe’d mark there was now a circle signifying its sealing. It glowed faintly before it assumed the color of the mark itself.

Anko let out a loud grunt before losing consciousness and falling forward. Kakashi was kneeling behind her in a flash, one arm wrapping around her chest and urging her body to lean back against him. She trembled, her body spasming violently as her chest moved rapidly in quick breaths.

As he held her tight through the aftershocks of the pain, Kakashi realized that maybe it was better to be stuck with ghosts you don't know.

* * *

Anko had remained unconscious for a good hour after the sealing, which had given Kakashi the chance to clean up a bit. He picked her up and placed her carefully on his battered couch, and then rummaged his closet for a shirt she could wear. He doubted she would appreciate being shirtless in his apartment once she woke up. He grabbed a blanket as well and returned to the living room. Placing the shirt next to her, he covered her with the blanket, and went about fixing the room.

When Anko came around, Kakashi’s living room was pretty much in its usual state, and he was sitting across from her on his single armchair, trying very hard not to let his eyes drop shut.

"Is it over?" her voice echoed in the quiet apartment, chasing away all remnants of sleep from his brain.

Kakashi sat up a bit, nodding. “It won’t bother you again.”

It wasn’t a complete truth. The seal could be easily broken if its bearer chose to allow the cursed mark to take over. But he knew that Anko would never embrace the cursed mark, she would never reach out to those forbidden inventories of chakra and power, so he didn't elaborate any further. For her, it was over.

Anko took a few moments to calm down her breathing, all the while looking at his ceiling. She didn’t appear to be in pain anymore, but her hand had once again gone up to cradle her shoulder, and he knew that the seal would be bothering her for a few days. Not a discomfort exactly, but a numbness of sorts. Like the pain of a phantom limb.

Her voice was quiet when she spoke next. "I really thought I was gonna die this time."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Has it hurt that much before?"

Anko nodded, turning her head to look at him. "It was escalating, ever since Orochimaru came back. I've had a few episodes, but never this bad."

He sighed, rubbing his eyes with his right hand. It had been months since then, a little over a year. "You should have had it sealed back then."

He remembered from her file that when she had been found, after Orochimaru had cast her away, the Sandaime had sealed her cursed mark himself. Technically, a seal was only covering its full potential while its creator was alive. Since the Sandaime had died, and Orochimaru’s presence had become more imminent, Anko's seal must have been gradually deteriorating in the past year. No wonder she had been so unfocused on their last mission. He wasn’t surprised that she had begged him to seal it tonight; he could only imagine how much she had been suffering all these months for her to finally reach the breaking point.

"I could handle it," she countered. "I told you before, the pain reminds me—"

"That you survived, I know," Kakashi cut in, looking at her with disapproval. "It shouldn't, Anko. The scar itself should remind you that. You don't need the pain to feel alive."

"Is that why you hide yours?"

His hand automatically reached for the scar over his left eye, exposed to her gaze without his hitai-ate to cover it. Of course he wasn’t wearing it. He had been sleeping when she had appeared on his doorstep.

He let his hand fall on his thigh and he shook his head. "Mine is different."

"How so?"

"It only serves to remind me of what I lost."

Anko gazed at him with hooded eyes, her bangs clinging to her forehead and her hand still cradling her shoulder. "It shouldn't."

Kakashi looked away. For a while, the only thing disturbing the silence of his apartment was Anko's breathing as she fought to find a steady pace again.

He didn’t know how many minutes had passed when he heard the rustling of fabric, and turned his head to see Anko trying to sit up. Without thinking, he rushed to her side, one hand on her back as he helped her. However, when his palm came in contact with her bare skin, he almost jumped back. He had forgotten that she was almost naked under the blanket.

“Uh, your um…” He cleared his throat, pushing the shirt he had retrieved earlier towards her. “You can wear this.”

Anko raised an eyebrow at him, before looking down at the offered material and smirking a bit. “So you finally got me naked, Hatake."

Kakashi flushed under his mask, before standing up and moving away to give her privacy — and spare himself the embarrassment.

“I mean, midnight visits, shady activities in the dark, giving me your clothes...” Anko teased as she tried to pull on the shirt. Clearly, she was enjoying this way too much for someone who had come very close to dying an hour ago. “Did we start an affair when I wasn’t paying attention?"

“Hilarious, Anko,” he admonished, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Hey, if you don’t joke when you’ve cheated death, when will you?” She finally managed to tug the hem down over her breasts and smooth it over her belly. “There. I’m decent.”

Cautiously, Kakashi looked at her over his shoulder and, finding her appearance acceptable, he assumed his previous seat.

"Is your injury better now?" she asked, making his brow crease in confusion.

"My what?"

"The hit you took for me. Has it healed?"

Kakashi sighed. He could not believe this woman. "You just went through a very strenuous sealing procedure and you're asking about my week-old flesh wound?"

"Hey, I was there, remember? That was no flesh wound, so don’t try to bullshit your way around this."

Kakashi shook his head. "You really are something, Anko."

Anko smirked. "What something is that, Hatake?"

"Something bad. Definitely bad."

"Like fun bad?"

"Well, I wouldn't know. I am no expert on the fun department, after all, as you have so generously reminded me a handful of times."

"Oh, I'm sure you know plenty of fun. Maybe it's just a different kind."

Kakashi resisted the urge to chuckle. Even under the stress and danger of almost dying, this woman did not lose her spirit. It was one of the things he admired about Anko. Near-death situations were not a point for contemplation for her, merely a reminder that life is short and that she should not waste one moment not enjoying it to the fullest. It was a trait he was jealous of, one so contrasting with his own apathy towards his numerous brushes with death.

He was almost certain that there was nothing that could knock the smirk off of Anko’s face. It would only bend to her own will, and she would not allow herself to be ruled by external forces. Anko Mitarashi was a force of her own, and he couldn’t respect her any more for it.

"You know you’ll have to report this, right?" Kakashi told her, choosing to change the subject for the sake of keeping his blood pressure on normal levels.

Anko fell back against the couch with a groan. “She's going to bench me. Take me off the active roster. I'll be one-on-one with Ibiki for _months_."

Kakashi smiled. "And here I thought you could use some time off from missions with me."

"I could, trust me. But trading it for desk work with Ibiki? And _Genma_? Hell, I'd rather track down Akatsuki."

"I admire your aversion towards exaggeration."

"It’s not funny,” she growled. “I don't work well when I'm caged in. I don’t care for desk work, as long as there’s an alternative handy if I need it. Knowing that I can only sit there and fill out that fucking paperwork is enough to make me lose my mind.”

"It's a good thing you have the Chuunin exams to keep you busy then.”

“Well, aren’t I lucky?” Anko said sarcastically, rolling her shoulder experimentally and wincing at the motion.

Kakashi noticed it and stood up. "Well, you're welcome to stay tonight. The pain will probably still be tangible for a few hours at least, so it’s best if you don’t move around too much."

"I wasn't really planning on moving either way, Hatake," she said with a grin and made herself comfortable against the cushions.

Kakashi nodded. "I'll get you another blanket."

"What, no big argument to convince me to take the bed? And they call you a gentleman."

"Nobody calls me that."

" _I_ do. Occasionally. Just not in your face."

"Alright," he said, offering her a chuckle as he retreated to his bedroom.

By the time he had gotten back to the living room, Anko was snoring lightly. Kakashi smiled as he draped the blanket over her sleeping form. He had rarely seen Anko look calm and relaxed, and it was usually a ruse. Seeing her now, in a rare moment when exhaustion had overtaken her, she looked younger than she was, free of the burdens she was carrying. She kind of reminded him of Naruto.

Turning off the lights, Kakashi went back to his bedroom and slipped under the covers, closing his one black eye and drifting for the first time in a long while into a restful and undisturbed sleep.


	21. the stillness of deep waters

Anko woke up suffocating. She bolted upright suddenly, clawing for breath.

Like it had a thousand times before, her hand shot up to her left shoulder, feeling the slightly raised skin around the place where her mark had resided for more than a decade. It was tender to the touch, and it hurt when she dug her fingers into it, but she could tell the difference. This was the pain of a healing wound, not of one that was raw and still — _always —_ bleeding.

Anko could feel the sweat clinging to her back and forehead as she eased herself back on her makeshift bed. Judging by the darkness of the room, it was early, way too early for her to be awake. Her ears were buzzing, and the burning in her seal was making her toes and fingertips tingle.

Huh. Her _seal._ Now that was something she would need time getting used to.

It was hard to believe that it was finally over. The knowledge that the mark was once again suppressed, unable to cause her any more pain, left her as elated as she was confused. It was a strange feeling, to be bereft of a shadow that had been looming over you for so long. Since the original seal had begun fading after the Sandaime’s death, the mark had made her feel like part of herself wasn’t her own, and maybe that was still the case, as long as the brand was on her skin, but Kakashi’s seal made her feel safer, if only by a fraction.

She could only thank whatever greater power was out there that she had managed to get to him on time.

It was a very dangerous situation, the one she had willingly walked into last night. She may have considered Kakashi someone worthy of her friendship for a while now, but this level of exposure, of vulnerability, was an entirely different thing. She wasn’t the kind of person who let herself out in the open easily. She liked to make others believe that she did, but in reality she kept her cards very close to her chest.

She had known for a while now that her relationship with Kakashi was not what it had originally set out to be; namely, a forced partnership. Without expecting it, she had grown close to him, had grown to appreciate his company, and even trust him to have her back, while she in turn had his. She had unexpectedly found someone who could not only match her wits, but also rise against her when she was wrong, unconcerned with letting her down easy. There weren’t a lot of people who didn’t at least act wary towards her, and Anko appreciated his honesty more than anything.

The problem was that this appreciation of his character had gradually begun to blossom into attraction to him as a man. She could tell by the way she had begun noticing things — like the roughness of his voice, or the bulge of his arms, or the faint shape of his lips under the mask. Which was entirely idiotic on its own, because how could she be attracted to someone when she didn’t even know what his face looked like?

Anko was no stranger to fraternization among colleagues. After all, shinobi rarely operated in civilian circles, so relationships of any sort were generally confined within the ranks. She had had her own fair share of interactions throughout the years, but she knew better than to get too personal with the people she worked with. After all, the T&I Department’s unofficial motto was: _we fuck people’s minds, but we don’t fuck each other._

Which made this thing with Kakashi too damn confusing, because he wasn’t a steady partner. This thing between them would only continue for as long as the Godaime saw fit, and then it would dissolve, with each of them going their own way. So, technically, he was as off-limits as he was within them.

Feeling frustrated by even thinking about this situation, she pushed herself up and began pacing around the living room. Movement always eased her mind, however restricted it might was.

It wasn’t the first time she had come to Kakashi’s place, although she absently thought that so far she had never actually been invited by him. From her previous visit, she remembered that there was hardly anything of interest in the small apartment. Kakashi’s place was tidy and clean, and entirely utilitarian. Apart from some shelves filled with books and scrolls that a shinobi could find appealing, there was nothing to catch one’s attention.

Without really thinking about it, she ventured towards the end of the small hallway, where she knew Kakashi’s bedroom was. The door was ajar, and she had no trouble slipping through it without making any noise.

Kakashi's room was as generic as the rest of him. While it was spacious, its furnishing was scarce. A simple double bed with shuriken patterned sheets, a closet, a small desk under the window and a set of drawers next to it. Her own room didn't have much more than that, but Kakashi's seemed hollow somehow. Almost as if he wasn't actually living there, but just passing through.

She didn’t know what to make of that thought.

Quietly, Anko walked to his bed and stared him down. He was sleeping on his side in the middle of the bed, blankets drawn up to his waist and mask ever-present. She wavered for a moment, before carefully depositing her weight on the edge of the mattress. Kakashi didn't flinch, didn't wake, or make any movement that would indicate his awareness of her presence. She was genuinely surprised. He seemed to be sleeping deeply, but she knew that a lifetime as a shinobi cultivated a unique kind of paranoia in you that rarely allowed you to sleep without keeping one eye open.

Maybe he simply didn’t consider her a threat. Or maybe he actually was the kind of idiot who would get murdered in his sleep because he slept like a log. So much for being the legendary Copy Ninja.

However, she was kind of grateful for it. Kakashi was always so elusive, it was actually nice to be able to consider him from up close for once. The fact that she was being completely creepy wasn’t lost on her, but she pushed it to the back of her mind for now.

She allowed her eyes to perceive him at first. The steady rise and fall of his chest, the taut muscles of his chest and arms that his sleeveless shirt did nothing to hide, his strong jaw and high cheekbones, the scar tracing down his left eyelid and the floppy silver hair that fell messily on his forehead with no hitai-ate to pull it back.

She would be lying if she said that she wasn't tempted to pull his mask down and see for herself what he truly looked like. But that would only betray the trust that Kakashi had placed on her. Plus, she had no doubt that, heavy sleeper or not, the moment her finger would hook beneath the material, his hand would flash to her wrist and then it would all be over.

Knowing that she would later beat herself over it, Anko scooted closer to him, moving so that she was lying on her side as well, with her head supported by her propped arm. The new position allowed her to study him even better. Under the thin material of his mask, she could make out the outline of his lips and nose, the tiny tent it made as he breathed in and out in his sleep.

Anko pondered over it for a moment, before slowly reaching out to his face. She really hoped that he wouldn’t wake up now. Her fingertips grazed his chin lightly, waiting for a reaction. When he made no move other than to continue breathing steadily, she cupped his jaw fully, pressing slightly and feeling his light stubble poking at her hand through the mask. The fabric was soft, worn from years of constant use, and she realized for the first time that the barrier between his covered face and the rest of the world wasn’t as impenetrable as she originally believed.

Her fingertips lightly traced the vertical scar over his left eye, and she briefly wondered how much it must have hurt when he got it. Or had his grief for the loss of his teammate overshadowed all and any physical pain he was feeling? Deciding not to duel on that, she teased the ridge of his nose, before tenderly running her fingertips over his masked lips, trying to determine their shape.

Her hand dropped quietly from his face and she continued to watch him. What would it feel like to kiss him? What would it feel like to have him laid bare in front of her, stripped of all those layers he so fervently insisted on hiding himself under?

She let her eyes wander to his exposed arms. She remembered commenting on his forearms before, but his biceps were really a work of art. Recalling the muscular abdomen that she had stolen a peek at during their latest mission, Anko almost hummed in appreciation. It was a good body. Not overly muscular, but strong — sturdy. Sculpted by a lifetime of war and strain. Her eyes returned to his face. She wondered what other scars he bore.

There was a voice in the back of her mind that told her that she didn’t want to find out. Kakashi was a shitstorm waiting to happen, there were no doubts about that. There were things about him that she could only guess at; pieces of his past that had shaped him into this heavily guarded shell of a man. The mystery surrounding him was as enticing as it was intimidating.

They all had their dark corners. But why did Kakashi’s felt so inviting? Why did his darkness seem to call out to hers?

What was it about this man that made her feel so _exposed_?

All those questions made the headache caused by the mark intensify. Sighing lightly, Anko closed her eyes, curling close to Kakashi's side, careful not to touch him. For some reason, she felt safe, nestled in the bed Kakashi slept every night, with his warm body next to her. His presence seemed to nullify the burning pain in her shoulder, and she inched closer to the Copy Ninja, allowing herself to bask in the warmth radiating off of him.

She would be gone long before he woke up and questioned her presence in his bed. She would leave and then avoid him for as long as possible, until she finally managed to sort out the feelings warring inside her. She would keep her distance until she had a reasonable excuse to seek him out again.

But for now, she would have this moment.


End file.
